Euponera malayana (Wheeler, 1929)

Hamer, Matthew T., Lee, Jonathan Hon Chung, Tse, Cheung Yau Leo, Silva, Thiago S. R. & Guénard, Benoit, 2022, Remarkable diversity in a little red dot: a comprehensive checklist of known ant species in Singapore (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) with notes on ecology and taxonomy, Asian Myrmecology (e 015006) 15, pp. 1-152 : 120-121

publication ID	https://doi.org/10.20362/am.015006
DOI	https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15474548
persistent identifier	https://treatment.plazi.org/id/03B68783-3122-FFDD-FD73-7EC3FE1FFB77
treatment provided by	Felipe
scientific name	Euponera malayana (Wheeler, 1929)
status

Treatment

Euponera malayana (Wheeler, 1929) View in CoL

Material examined. Queen and worker, Mandai Besar S 3 Mangrove, 5 Aug 1987, S. Teo leg., ZRC _ ENT00048803-48804 View Materials ; males, Prince George’s Park Residences ( NUS), May-Sep 2015, M.S. Foo & W. Wang leg., ZRC _BDP multiple .

Material not physically examined. Unknown.

Literature. Wang et al. (2018a) [as Euponera sp.1 .of.WW – but see Remarks].

Localities. Mandai Besar Mangrove; Prince George’s Park Residences ( NUS).

Habitat/Ecology. A queen and worker of this species were found in an abandoned mud lobster ( Thalassina sp. ) mound in mangroves. Males were identified from a malaise trap sample from a disturbed secondary forest fragment, in a semi-urban setting.

Remarks. This genus appears similar to Ectomomyrmex , but can be most easily distinguished from the latter by the presence of basal mandibular pits (absent in Ectomomyrmex ).

Euponera malayana can be distinguished from most other congeners in Southeast Asia by its relative smaller size (TL 4.3-4.4 mm), indistinct longitudinal subocular groove, and near-trapezoidal petiole in profile view with anterior face weakly convex (the latter condition more evident in dorsal view).

Based on observations of males of other Euponera species and their worker nestmates, we deduced that Euponera sp.1 .of.WW mentioned in Wang et al. (2018a) should be E. malayana . The male specimens mentioned in the study correspond to those encoded ‘ZRC_BDP’ under ‘Material examined’. We observed that petioles of Euponera males tend to resemble those of conspecific workers, albeit smaller in size with weaker edges. Males of Euponera sp.1 .of.WW seem relatively smaller than other congeneric males, and have short, subtriangular petioles with rounded apices, much like a shrunken version of the worker’s petiole.

Thus, we tentatively treat these males as E. malayana , but this assessment may change in future if full colony series of the species are collected, and our initial deductions are proven otherwise.