Spiny Cautious Ant
Colony
Undescribed Shield Ant
S1, Worker, profile
Animals
Plants
Info
| Spiny Cautious Ant Colony | | Undescribed Shield Ant S1, Worker, profile | | ||
Animals Plants Info |
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta) | ||||||||||||
| Order: | Ant Bee Wasps (Hymenoptera) | |||||||||||||
| Family: | Small Ant (Ant: Formicidae Myrmicinae) iNaturalist Observation | |||||||||||||
| Species: | Undescribed Shield Ant (Meranoplus sp ES01)| This Photo: | S1, Worker, dorsal | Thank you Mark Ayers for identifying and Matthew Connors & Grant Wang (PonerineCat) for confirming the id of this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere ~3.5mm long female worker. We thought this was M. dimidiatus but Mark Ayers said the shield didn't match images of the holotype. They look the same to us; it just shows how an expert eye can see things we amateurs miss. Mark helped further by saying "The most clear difference is the presence of the two medial teeth on the posterior margin, in M. dimidiatus these are missing." Grant said "This is indeed undescribed, dimidiatus group. More than half the known species are undescribed, and the unknown are also by definition undescribed."
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