Please welcome the shiny new ant genera Tanipone and Vicinopone to the world’s ant fauna!
The new genera emerge from a detailed taxonomic study of the Malagasy and Afrotropical genus Simopone, published this week by Barry Bolton and Brian Fisher in an open-access monograph in Zootaxa.
source: Bolton B., Fisher B.L. 2012. Taxonomy of the cerapachyine ant genera Simopone Forel, Vicinopone gen. n. and Tanipone gen. n. (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Zootaxa 3283: 1–101.
I’m confused: What would a genus of cryptic subterranean ant-hunting specialists do with such large (and, dare I say, adorable) eyes?
Don’t be confused. These large eyed ant-hunters are almost all arboreal.
Those are some wierd looking ants. If I had just seen the pix, I would be pretty much at a loss….
They certainly are shaped well for living in hollow stems, if that is what they do.
Well, now you’ve done it…I am just a lowly ecologist with a general interest in biogeography and biodiversity but now I am thoroughly sucked into questions on ant biogeography — diversity in relation to ecology — I don’t know where to begin..Wow!