Nothomyrmecia macrops is a rare genus of ants living in South Australia. It has been described as ‘prominent and effective and is capable of inflicting a painful sting to humans’ The IUCN lists the ant as Critically Endangered. Possible threats to its survival include habitat destruction and climate change.
About Nothomyrmecia in brief
Nothomyrmecia macrops is a rare genus of ants living in South Australia. It was first described by Australian entomologist John S. Clark in 1934. The ants are monomorphic, showing little morphological differentiation among one another. Mature colonies are very small, with only 50 to 100 individuals in each nest. Workers are strictly nocturnal and are solitary foragers, collecting arthropod prey and sweet substances such as honeydew from scale insects and other Hemiptera. It has been described as ‘prominent and effective and is capable of inflicting a painful sting to humans’ The IUCN lists the ant as Critically Endangered. Possible threats to its survival include habitat destruction and climate change. It shows similar characteristics to Myrmecia, and somewhat resembles Oecophylla, commonly known as weaver ants. A retractable stinger is present at the rear of the abdomen, and is also present in the front and at the front of the head. The mandibles, clypeus, antennae and legs are pale yellow. The hairs on the body are yellow, erect and long and abundant, but on the antennaes and legs they are shorter and suberect. The head is longer than it is wide and broader towards the back. The long antennal scapes extend beyond the occipital border, and the second segment is slightly longer than the first, third and fourth. The first segment of the gaster is broader than long by a third at the third and a third by a fourth.
It is also capable of’sting’ humans; the first segment is just as long as it is long as the mesonotum is. The second segment, pronotum, epinotum and thorax are longer and wider than the thorax and the abdomen is just a few millimetres long. The abdomen is also a little longer and narrower at the back than the front with strongly convex sides and the sides of the eyes are convex around the occital border of the funiculae. The ant is considered to be the most plesiomorphic ant alive and a ‘living fossil’, stimulating studies on its morphology, behaviour, ecology, and chromosomes. The full distribution of the species has never been assessed, and it is unknown how widespread the species truly is. It can be found in old-growth mallee woodland and Eucalyptus woodland. The queen ant will mate with one or more males and, during colony foundation, she will hunt for food until the brood have fully developed. Queens are univoltine. Two queens may establish a colony together, but only one will remain once the first generation of workers has been reared. Nothomyrsecia was not seen again for four decades until a group of entomologists rediscovered it in 1977, 1,300 km away from the original reported site. Dubbed as the ‘Holy Grail’ of myrmecology, the ant was subject to great scientific interest after its rediscovery.
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This page is based on the article Nothomyrmecia published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
