Lordomyrma

Taylor, Robert W., 2012, six new species from India, Viet Nam and the Philippines (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Myrmicinae), Zootaxa 3282, pp. 45-60 : 46-47

Putative Lordomyrma species discussed by Branstetter (2009)

Two Asian species originally described in genus Stenamma Westwood were assigned to Lordomyrma by Branstetter (2009): (1) Stenamma bhutanense Baroni Urbani (1977) from Bhutan, and (2) Stenamma sinense Ma, Xu, Makio & DuBois (2007) from Shanxi Province, North China. Branstetter also recognized and illustrated voucher specimens of two additional similar morphospecies designated as (3) “ Lordomyrma cf. bhutanensis 1” from Nepal (MCZC collection) and (4) “ Lordomyrma cf. bhutanensis 2” from Yunnan Province, southern China (CASC collection)(see his figs 25–33, which also depict the S. bhutanense holotype).

These taxa in my opinion seem unlikely to be congeneric with Lordomyrma furcifera on morphological grounds, compromising their assignment to Lordomyrma however closely they might be related in Branstetter’s phylogeny (see also the more immediately relevant phylogeny of Lucky & Sarnat (2010) fig 3). They differ from the Lordomyrma azumai conformational paradigm as follows: (1) the absence of antennal scrobes and foveae, and (2) differences in clypeal structure, notably the presence of an anteromedian angle. Also, the conformation of the mesosoma and waist nodes is quite unlike that of any known morphospecies at present plausibly referable to Lordomyrma .

Some species or groups of species presently assigned to Lordomyrma lack antennal scrobes and foveae (see illustrations in Taylor, 2009). The several examples are widely separated geographically and conformationally dissimilar. Their similarities in this detail may be attributed in part to multiple homoplasy involving repeated secondary loss of the antennal foveae within the Lordomyrma clade. Antennal scrobes and foveae are synapomorphically present in most Lordomyrma species, including all of those known from mainland or archipelagic S.E. Asia.

A median clypeal point or denticle is present also in the New Guinea Highlands endemic nominal genus Ancyridris Wheeler , which has been previously discussed as a possible junior synonym of Lordomyrma (see

1. See http://www.antweb.org/description.do?name= lordomyrma &rank=genus&project=allantwebants Taylor, 2010), and also (uniquely in known nominal Lordomyrma species) in L. epinotalis Mann (Ysabel, Solomon Islands), a species also illustrated in the Antweb gallery.

“ Ancyridris cf. polyrhachioides” Wheeler (of Lucky & Sarnat, with voucher specimen illustrated on Antweb) and L. epinotalis , along with the Australian Lordomyrma AU02 of the Antweb gallery and the problematical taxa discussed by Branstetter, are excluded from the phyletic “triangle” which includes all species of “ Lordomyrma sensu stricto ” represented in Lucky & Sarnat fig 3, so they might in fact not be components of the ultimate Lordomyrma phylad, or taxonomically referable to Lordomyrma , though they are shown to be derived from common ancestral stock. All of them, incidentally, lack antennal foveae.

Eguchi et. al (2011: 16-18) suggest that the problematic species discussed by Branstetter are more likely congeneric with those of genus Lasiomyrma Terayama & Yamane (2000) , which has three named species, respectively from Java, Sabah and Thailand ( Jaitrong, 2010). This hypothesis should be further explored, as should the possible status of Lasiomyrma versus Lordomyrma versus Ancyridris . The status of Lordomyrma epinotalis , in particular, and its possible affinity with the named Lasiomyrma species needs to be critically assessed. That species and the Australian Lordomyrma AU02 of the Antweb gallery appear morphologically to be more closely related to the described Lasiomyrma species than to others assigned to Lordomyrma sensu stricto, as do several other similar undescribed Australian and Melanesian species represented in the ANIC. Apropos, on the basis of sting morphology, Kugler (1994) found L. epinotalis “very different from the other Lordomyrma species I have examined”, in a context where “With the exception of L. epinotalis , all of the Lordomyrma species examined ( L. caledonica (André) , L. levifrons ( Mann) , L. punctiventris Wheeler , L. rouxi (Emery) , L. striatella ( Mann) and L. tortuosa ( Mann)) have several distinctive characters within the myrmicines” ( Kugler, 1997, species list inserted). Placement in Stenamma of the taxa discussed by Branstetter seems genuinely inappropriate, as he indicated. That noted, they seem best provisionally accommodated as “ species inquirendae ” in either Lordomyrma or Lasiomyrma , mainly because convention requires discussion of such taxa in binomial combination. The Lordomyrma alternative is accepted here.