Ponera swezeyi ( Wheeler, 1933 )

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 : 133-134

publication ID	https://doi.org/10.20362/am.015006
persistent identifier	https://treatment.plazi.org/id/03B68783-31D1-FF20-FD4B-79C3FEE3FDD7
treatment provided by	Felipe
scientific name	Ponera swezeyi ( Wheeler, 1933 )
status

Treatment

Ponera swezeyi ( Wheeler, 1933) View in CoL

Material examined. Prince George’s Park Residences ( NUS), 1.29239, 103.7787, 6 Dec 2017, W. Wang leg., ZRC _ ENT00027912 View Materials GoogleMaps ; alate queen, Kent Ridge Park, YM site 2, 7 Dec 2017, W. Wang leg., ZRC _ ENT00027984 View Materials ; Bukit Timah Nature Reserve , 1.35599, 103.77397, 8 Aug 2017, W. Wang leg., WW-SG17-058, ZRC _ ENT00028318 View Materials GoogleMaps ; same locality as previous, 8 Sep 2005, collector unknown, ZRC _ ENT00048385 View Materials GoogleMaps .

Material not physically examined. Unknown.

Literature. None. New record.

Localities. Bukit Timah Nature Reserve; Kent Ridge Park; Prince George’s Park Residences ( NUS).

Habitat/Ecology. This species is associated mostly with old/mature secondary forests at varied levels of disturbance. Individuals were collected from leaf litter and soil substrate via Winkler extraction, and also soil at bases of trees. On one occasion, some workers were found with a Brachyponera colony in rotting wood.

Remarks. Despite being fairly widespread throughout Australasia and Oceania, P. swezeyi is suspected to actually be native to the Oriental region because of its shared characters with three other minute Oriental species: P. baka Xu, 2001 , P. xantha Xu, 2001 , and P. shennong Terayama, 2009 ( Leong et al. 2019). These similarities include: relatively small body size (HW 0.28-0.35), thick petiolar node in lateral view, yellowish-brown body, and 5-segmented antennal club (sometimes indistinct).