Bioacoustics of Platythyreini

DIAGNOSIS Worker and queen: Typical Ponerinae with elongate body and well-developed exsertile sting. Head slightly to markedly longer than broad, with sides parallel or gently converging in front. Compound eyes large, moderate in size, or absent. Ocelli always absent in worker, and sometimes even in winged queens. Antennae 12 - segmented, with relatively long scape; funiculus very smooth in outline (without constrictions between segments), without a defined club, but sometimes gradually thickened apicad. Mandibles unremarkable, triangular or short and curvedhorizontal, serially toothed, denticulate or edentate. Maxillary palpi with 3 - 6 segments, labial palpi with 2 - 4 segments. Promesonotal suture present and apparently flexible ( Platythyrea ) or absent ( Probolomyrmex ); other sutures or grooves on truncal dorsum indistinct or lacking. Propodeal angles variably armed with sharp or blunt margins, or even blunt, tooth-like processes; the declivity concave from side to side, and often from top to bottom as well. Petiole sessile, node more or less rounded anterodorsally, but with a usually truncate, excavate, or at least abruptly descending posterior face; posterodorsal border usually (but not always) marginate, or with 2 or 3 teeth or low, angular or rounded processes. Subpetiolar process present in some form. Gaster long-cylindrical, with a tapered apex; postpetiolar (third true abdominal) segment much larger than petiole and subequal to the succeeding segment, and therefore an integral part of the gaster, although it is separated from the rest of the gaster by a modest constriction, at least in side view. Stridulatory file present on the pretergite of the second gastric segment in Platythyrea but lacking in Probolomyrmex . Legs with at least one pectinate spur on each tibial apex; tarsal claws with or without a submedian tooth. Sculpture and pilosity fine, usually reduced to an opaque or subopaque pruinose condition that is particularly characteristic, with erect pilosity restricted at most to mandibles, clypeus, gastric apex, and the meatus of the metapleural gland; but in a few ( Platythyrea ) species, short, fine, erect or suberect hairs are on the body and appendage surfaces and may be rather abundant. The sculpture apparently consists of extremely fine, dense punctation, often too small to be resolved at magnification upwards of 100 X with the light microscope, and associated with this is often a more or less well-developed, but never obtrusive, fine, short, appressed pubescence. In addition, a coarser but still rather shallow sprinkling of larger round punctures or foveolae is superimposed on the fine pruinose integument; this coarser punctation is probably always present in some form, but is variably distinct in different parts of the body and in different species, and varies also in gauge and density. Color ranging from ferruginous to black, sometimes with contrasting yellowish or reddish antennae and legs, but, even in the black species, the callow period seems to last a long time as far as pigmentation is concerned, and yellow, reddish, or brown forms of normally black species are common. The reader may have noted that the important characters of antennal insertions, clypeal form, and frontal lobes and carinae were not mentioned in the preceding remarks. These structures differ strikingly in the 2 genera of Platythyreini , Platythyrea and Probolomyrmex , and it seems foolish to make a tribal definition that contains such wide differences as these or, for example, those in wing venation or larval form. Male: Typically proponerine in form, differing rather modestly from the queens in size and other characters, as compared with the higher subfamilies or even in tribe Ponerini . Mandibles opposable or crossing over at full closure. Head broader than long, with much larger, more convex eyes than in workers. Antennae 13 - merous, smooth. Genitalia retractile; pygidium sometimes terminating in a point or in a downcurved spine like that of many Ponerini males. Genitalia including recognizable parameres, laciniae, and aedeagus, the last generally with at least some serration on the ventral edge.