Pachycondyla is a ponerine genus of ants found in the Neotropics.

Pachycondyla
Temporal range: Lutetian-Present
Pachycondyla harpax worker
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera
Family: Formicidae
Subfamily: Ponerinae
Tribe: Ponerini
Genus: Pachycondyla
Smith, 1858
Type species
Formica crassinoda
Latreille, 1802
Diversity[1]
37 species

Distribution

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Pachycondyla is currently distributed from southern United States to northern Argentina,[1] but some fossil species (e.g. P. eocenica and P. lutzi) are found in Europe.

Species

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The genus formerly contained hundreds of species, most of them belonging to at the time junior synonyms of Pachycondyla. While revising the ponerines, Schmidt & Shattuck (2014) revived many of the former synonyms, leaving only eleven species in Pachycondyla. They were not able to place some species with certainty, and left more than twenty species incertae sedis in Pachycondyla, acknowledging that "this placement is undoubtedly incorrect".[1]

 
P. eocenica holotype

References

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  1. ^ a b c Schmidt, C. A.; Shattuck, S. O. (2014). "The Higher Classification of the Ant Subfamily Ponerinae (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), with a Review of Ponerine Ecology and Behavior". Zootaxa. 3817 (1): 1–242. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.3817.1.1. PMID 24943802.
  2. ^ a b c Dlussky, G. M.; Rasnitsyn, A. P.; Perfilieva, K. S. (2015). "The ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of Bol'shaya Svetlovodnaya (late Eocene of Sikhote-Alin, Russian far east)". Caucasian Entomological Bulletin. 11 (1): 131–152. doi:10.23885/1814-3326-2015-11-1-131-152.
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