Vollenhovia penetrans ( Smith, 1857 )

Akbar, Shahid Ali, Bharti, Himender, Schifani, Enrico & Wachkoo, Aijaz Ahmad, 2023, Overview of the ant genus Vollenhovia (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) in India and Sri Lanka, with an illustrated key and the description of a new species, European Journal of Taxonomy 908, pp. 77-107 : 90

publication ID

https://doi.org/ 10.5852/ejt.2023.908.2339

publication LSID

lsid:zoobank.org:pub:0F6C37D2-DD6A-49E8-9447-5666859BE75E

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10470930

persistent identifier

https://treatment.plazi.org/id/8B339A0C-B358-9D00-333B-BA64A01341F0

treatment provided by

Plazi

scientific name

Vollenhovia penetrans ( Smith, 1857 )
status

 

Vollenhovia penetrans ( Smith, 1857) View in CoL

Fig. 8 View Fig

Atta penetrans Smith, 1857: 77 View Cited Treatment .

Type locality: Malaysia, Borneo, Sarawak [Holotype OXUM; images of CASENT 0901383 holotype queen examined].

Aphaenogaster penetrans – Emery 1893: 104; first combination in Aphaenogaster View in CoL .

Vollenhovia penetrans View in CoL – Donisthorpe, 1932: 450; first combination in Vollenhovia View in CoL .

Remarks

The only mention of V. penetrans in the region is that of an AntWeb specimen (CASENT0280819) verified by Bolton in 1976 ( Bharti et al. 2016). This Indan specimen was collected from the Andaman Islands by G. Rogers and housed at NHMUK and agrees well with the holotype ( Smith 1857). The species is unfortunately only known from the queen caste, which is characterized by a finely longitudinally striate head and mesosomal dorsum with oblong punctures. Vollenhovia taxonomy is almost entirely based on the worker caste, which makes the current lack of information on V. penetrans workers problematic. The worker caste is known in V. brevicornis ( Emery, 1893) and V. pertinax (Smith, 1861) from Southeastern Asia, two species that are considered extremely similar to V. penetrans to the point of being considered potential synonyms ( Wang et al. 2022). As mentioned before, known workers from the V. penetrans complex resemble V. oblonga laevithorax among the taxa treated in this study, while they differ from all the others by having a largely smooth area with sparse punctation near the posterior margin of the head and an almost entirely smooth dorsal surface of the mesosoma and metasoma. It is therefore unclear whether V. penetrans and V. oblonga laevithorax records from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands may refer to a single species.

Distribution

Borneo, India (Andaman and Nicobar Islands), Indonesia, Malaysia ( Smith 1857; Wang et al. 2022).

OXUM

United Kingdom, Oxford, University Museum of Natural History

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Arthropoda

Class

Insecta

Order

Hymenoptera

Family

Formicidae

Genus

Vollenhovia

Loc

Vollenhovia penetrans ( Smith, 1857 )

Akbar, Shahid Ali, Bharti, Himender, Schifani, Enrico & Wachkoo, Aijaz Ahmad 2023
2023
Loc

Vollenhovia penetrans

Donisthorpe H. 1932: 450
1932
Loc

Aphaenogaster penetrans

Emery C. 1893: 104
1893
Loc

Atta penetrans

Smith F. 1857: 77
1857
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