Phrynoponera

The name Phrynoponera first appeared in a paper by Wheeler (1920), merely as a new genus-group name with the designation of an already described species as the type species. A couple of years later Wheeler (1922) presented a formal description of the genus, a synopsis of newly discovered material from the Democratic Republic of Congo, mostly infraspecific taxa, and notes on a few previously described forms. The description of the genus that Wheeler (1922) presented was adequate for its time, but superficial by modern standards and mistaken in several characters. First, Wheeler noted that the "stridulatory surface is well developed", which it is not. In fact, the stridulitrum is absent from all species except P. pulchella, where a vestigial and non-functional remnant is present. Second, he maintained that there was an "absence of any constriction between postpetiole [= first gastral segment] and gaster", when in fact differentiated presclerites are strongly developed on the second gastral segment but are specialized in form and usually concealed by the posterior portions of the sclerites of the first gastral segment. However, Wheeler did recognise that the apparent similarities between his Phrynoponera species and two Indian Pachycondyla (then Bothroponera) species, Pachycondyla bispinosa (bispinose propodeum) and Pachycondyla rufipes (denticulate dorsal margin of petiole), were superficial and possibly independently acquired. Each of these Phrynoponera-like species lack the extremely specialized morphology of the petiole sternite, helcium, and prora, as well as the characteristic 5-spinose petiole node, that are unique and consistent in the female castes of Phrynoponera.^[2]

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