Philippine ants of the genus Aenictus with descriptions of the females of two species

Abstract

On returning to the United States from a second sojourn of six years at Dumaguete, on the Island of Negros, Dr. Jas W. Chapman has brought another extensive collection of Philippine ants. Among them are numerous specimens taken from more than 40 different AEnictus colonies, and comprising the extra ordinary females of two of the species (zE. Iceviceps F. Smith and martini Forel), together with the larvae, insect prey and myrmecophiles (aenictophiles) of many of the foraging and bivouacking armies. Dr. Chapman will publish his ethological observations in a separate paper. The following taxonomic account, for which he has very generously contributed the speci mens, should supersede our notes on the Philippine zEnicti pub lished in our joint paper of 1925 and based on rather meager material. The genus AEnictus comprises some 119 described forms (82 species, 11 subspecies, 26 varieties) and is both taxonomically and ethologically the least adequately understood of the larger genera of Doryline ants. It is confined to the Old World, where it replaces the closely allied New World genus Eciton, but it has a very wide range, embracing the whole of Africa, the Indo malayan and Papuan Regions and Northeastern Australia. Most of the forms inhabit the Indomalayan Region (42 species, 7 subspecies, 17 varieties), but the African representation is not greatly inferior (34 species, 4 subspecies, 9 varieties). At the extreme limits of the range, however, the number of forms is greatly diminished, there being only six species in Africa north of the Sahara (Morocco, Oran, Tunis) and only three in Aus tralia (Queensland, New South Wales). No 1Anictus occurs in the Malagasy Region, which also lacks any species of Dorylus, the only other Old World genus of the subfamily Dorylinse.