213 



The Australian ants of the Genus aphaenogaster, 



Mayr. ] 



By William Morton Wheeler. 

 (Communicated by Arthur M. Lea.) 



[Read July 13, 1916.] 



Plates XXI. and XXII. 



In 1858 Frederick Smith described from Melbourne, 

 Victoria, under the name of Myrmica (Monomorium) 

 longiceps, a very common and widely-distributed Australian 

 ant, which was later referred by Mayr to the genus 

 Aphaenogaster . It was subsequently placed in the subgenus 

 Ischnomyrmex, Mayr, and recently changed to Deromyrma 

 by Forel, because the type of Ischnomyr?nex (longipes, F. 

 Smith) proved to be a Pheidole. Mayr in 1876 described the 

 male and female of what he believed to be A. longiceps, Sm., 

 from specimens taken in Queensland and New South Wales. 

 Although Smith's description is sufficiently clear to indicate 

 the modern generic allocation of his species, it was far from 

 satisfactory for specific identification, and confusion at once 

 resulted when Forel, in 1902, distinguished two Australian 

 forms of Aphaenogaster, one from Adelaide, South Australia, 

 which he referred to Smith's longiceps, and another from 

 Victoria and New South Wales, which he described as a new 

 subspecies, ruginota. For many years Forel and Emery 

 believed that there were two forms of Aphaenogaster in 

 Australia, the typical longiceps and Forel's subspecies 

 ruginota*; but as Smith's and Mayr's descriptions might apply 

 to either, Emery in 1913 sent specimens to Mr. Meade-Waldo, 

 who compared them with Smith's type, which is still in the 

 British Museum. From this comparison Emery concluded 

 that the Queensland form must be the true longiceps and the 

 more southern form the subspecies ruginota. He gave figures 

 of the males of what he took to be the two forms, but the 

 differences between them are insignificant. In 1915 Forel 

 elevated his ruginota to specific rank, and pointed out the 

 differences that separate it in all three phases from what he 

 regarded as the true longiceps. Not knowing which of the 



(l) Contribution from the Entomological Laboratory of the 

 Bussey Institution, Harvard University. No. 116. 



