No. 2. — The Australian Ants of the Genus Onychomyrmex. 



CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE ENTOMOLOGICAL LABORATORY OF THE 

 BUSSEY INSTITUTION, HARVARD UNIVERSITY. NO. 104. ' 



/ 



By William Morton Wheeler. 



Twenty years ago Emery described a singular ponerine ant taken by 

 Podenzana on Mt. Bellenden-Ker, in Queensland, as the type of a 

 new genus under the name of Onychomyrmex hedleyi, in honor of Mr. 

 C. Hedley, a distinguished Australian naturalist. The worker, which 

 was the only phase seen by Emery, exhibited an unusual combination 

 of characters, especially in the shape of the mandibles, clypeus, 

 petiole, and middle and hind tarsi, the terminal joints, pulvilli, and 

 claws of which were conspicuously enlarged. He regarded the 

 affinities of the genus as obscure. "Its mandibles and petiole," he 

 says, "recall the species of Amblyopone and related genera, but the 

 frontal carinae, approximated and dilated in front, resemble those of 

 Ponera and Leptogenys. The tibiae without spurs are not found in 

 any other Ponerinae. The tarsi, with their enormous claws and pul- 

 villi, have no analogue, to my knowledge, except in the Dorylinae 

 {Aenictus, Anomma), but the insertions of the antennae and the 

 structure of the thorax lead me to think that these resemblances do 

 not indicate a true relationship." Ashmead (Can. ent., 1905, 37, 

 p. 382) regarded the genus Onychomyrmex as constituting a distinct 

 tribe of Ponerinae (Onychomyrmicini). In his recent revision of the 

 subfamily in the "Genera Insectorum" (1911), Emery adopts Ash- 

 mead's name as that of a sixth and last subtribe in the tribe Ponerini. 



While collecting in the rich tropical "scrub" in the neighborhood 

 of Kuranda, Queensland during the autumn of 1914, I succeeded in 

 finding not only 0. hedleyi, which had not been recorded for nearly 

 twenty years, but also two additional species of the genus. On 

 returning to Boston I learned that Dr. E. Mjoberg had anticipated 

 me in finding 0. hedleyi and one of the other species, while he was 

 collecting for the Swedish scientific expedition to Australia during 

 1910-1913 and that Forel had just described the latter as 0. mjobergi. 

 The third species is described in the following pages as 0. doddi, in 



