page_title: Myrmecia regularis
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Myrmecia regularis / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: M. regularis front view
context_page_description: Myrmecia regularis is a species of ant endemic to Australia. A member of the genus Myrmecia in the subfamily Myrmeciinae, it was first described by American entomologist Walter Cecil Crawley in 1925. These ants are medium to large in size, measuring 10 to 20 millimetres, and they are bright brownish-red in colour. Queens and workers share similar morphological features, but they can be distinguished by the noticeable size difference. Males also look similar, but collected specimens are too damaged to be examined properly.
  M. regularis is found in the south-western coastal regions, inhabiting eucalypt woodland and open forests. They nest underground and do not build mounds. Workers are active during the day and night, foraging on trees in search for prey and sweet substances such as sap and nectar. The larvae are strictly carnivorous and only eat insects that workers capture. Nuptial flight occurs around February to April, with queens shedding their wings inside the nest and mating near to their parent nest. Queens tend to look for food for their young before they hatch, taking as long as eight months to develop. Certain frog species are known to dwell inside M. regularis colonies.
context_section_description: Excluding the mandibles, M. regularis workers measure 10 to 14 millimetres (0.4 to 0.6 in), with the mandibles measuring 3.6 millimetres (0.1 in). Including the mandibles, workers measure 14 to 20 millimetres (0.6 to 0.8 in), queens are 18 to 20 millimetres (0.7 to 0.8 in) and males are 15 to 17 millimetres (0.6 to 0.7 in). These ants are bright brownish-red in colour, with brown legs and scapes, and a black gaster. The whole of the head and thorax is a bright mahogany red, while the mandibles are shaded with brown. The hair is yellow, moderately long, erect and found all over the body, but the hairs are shorter on the legs and absent on the antennae. The pubescence (soft short hair) is confined to the clypeus.
  The queen shares the same colour variation, body sculpture and pilosity of a worker, but they are usually larger. Queens show reduced thoracic development, and Clark described them as "subapterous", suggesting that wings are present in the females as undifferentiated wing buds. However, queens collected from Manjimup bore well developed wings. The head, epinotum, mesonotum and pronotum are finely striate-rugose. The head is as long as it is broad with a straight occipital border. The mandibles are slightly shorter than the head with a concave border. The pronotum is broader than its total length by one-third and the mesonotum is broader by one-sixth, being almost circular in shape and clearly convex. The epinotum is also broader, but only slightly. The gaster is slightly broader, and the postpetiole is one-fifth broader than long. The scutellum is oval and almost twice as broad as long. Male specimens have been rarely collected, and those that are available are too badly damaged for a proper examination. However, the colour and pilosity of male and worker specimens show little differentiation.
  The heads of the workers and queens are as long as broad with convexed sides. The mandibles are long with thirteen known teeth. The first and third segments of the funiculus are equally long. The thorax is longer than broad by two to three-fourths its width, and the mesonotum is longer than it is broad in workers; the mesonotum is broader than it is long in queens. The node (a segment between the mesosoma and gaster) is as long as it is broad, and the postpetiole is one-sixth broader than long. The first segment of the gaster is broader than its length. M. regularis shares a similar appearance to M. forficata, but there are several morphological differences that separate the two. Owing to the rugose sculpture of the head and thorax, M. regularis is noticeably smaller than M. forficata. The mandibles of M. regularis are much narrower, the posterior corners of the head are more round and the petiolar peduncle is longer. The mandibles appear to be deep red, and some areas, such as the gastric segments, are golden brown.
caption: Head detail of M. regularis
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