Mesoponera Emery 1900
Creators: name: Eguchi, Katsuyuki
name: Viet, Bui Tuan
name: Yamane, Seiki
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2014
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Hymenoptera
Formicidae
Mesoponera

description: Mesoponera Emery, 1900b
Taxonomy. Mesoponera was first established as a subgenus of Euponera, and raised to genus by Bingham (1903). It was then synonymized with Pachycondyla by Brown in Bolton (1994), and assigned to the tribe Ponerini (Bolton 2003). However, based on a recent molecular phylogenetic analysis (Schmidt 2013), Schmidt & Shattuck (2014) revived Mesoponera as an independent genus, and placed it under the Odontomachus genus group of the tribe Ponerini.
Morphology. Workers of Vietnamese species have the following features (see also Schmidt & Shattuck 2014):
Worker monomorphic; body covered with a dense fine pubescence, and sparsely with standing hairs; head in full-face view subrectangular; preoccipital carina very fine dorsally; frontal lobes horizontal, small and narrow, separated from each other just with a longitudinal sulcus; antennal socket in full-face view only partly concealed by frontal lobe; antennal scrobe absent; median portion of clypeus with a median longitudinal ridge; anteromedian margin of clypeus convex and with a blunt median point; mandible elongate-triangular, very long, with ca. 15 teeth on masticatory margin; basal portion of mandible without a pit dorsolaterally; antenna 12-segmented, gradually incrassate from segment III to XII; eye moderate in size, located on side of head relatively close to mandibular insertion; promesonotum in lateral view with a continuous round dorsal outline; promesonotal suture completely separating pronotum from mesonotum; metanotal groove deep; mesonotum present as a distinct disc well margined anteriorly by promesonotal suture and posteriorly metanotal groove; mesopleuron separated well from mesonotum and metapleuron with distinct sutures, not divided by a transverse groove; propodeum unarmed; orifice of propodeal spiracle round and small; propodeal lobe almost absent; apicoventral part of foretibia usually with a small simple spur behind a large pectinate spur; apicoventral part of mid and hind tibiae with a simple spur in front of a large pectinate spur; outer surface of middle tibia with normal pilosity only; petiole without anterior peduncle; petiolar node squamiform, in lateral view high; subpetiolar process elongate rectangular; girdling constriction between abdominal segments III and IV relatively weak; abdominal sternite III with a distinct anteroventral flange beneath helcium; sting well developed.
Differentiation. The worker of Mesoponera is somewhat similar to that of Brachyponera, but in the latter the basal portion of mandible has a pit or groove dorsolaterally (but the pit/groove is sometimes obsolete), mandible is not elongate, and prora is reduced and notexternally visible.
Vietnamese species (2 spp.).
M. melanaria (Emery, 1893). Zry (Cat Tien).
M. s p. eg-1 [cf. M. papuana (Viehmeyer, 1914)] (Phu Quoc, Van Ban).
Bionomics. Mesoponera sp. eg-1 occurs in well-developed forests, and nest in rotting logs and wood fragments.
description: Published as part of Eguchi, Katsuyuki, Viet, Bui Tuan & Yamane, Seiki, 2014, Generic Synopsis of the Formicidae of Vietnam (Insecta: Hymenoptera), Part II — Cerapachyinae, Aenictinae, Dorylinae, Leptanillinae, Amblyoponinae, Ponerinae, Ectatomminae and Proceratiinae, pp. 1-46 in Zootaxa 3860 (1) on pages 36-37, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3860.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/287059