The genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of ants Tetraponera is in the family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 Formicidae and are characterised by their arboreal nature and slender bodies. There are 86 described species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 of Tetraponera all of them living in hollow structures of plants and trees, such as thorns or branches, these hosts are known as myrmecophytes. Tetraponera are closely related to the new world genus of ants Pseudomyrmex

Pseudomyrmex

Pseudomyrmex is a genus of stinging, wasp-like ants in the family Formicidae . They are large eyed, slender ants with an arboreal habitat. They are found exclusively in the New World in tropical and subtropical regions...

but differ in their relationships with host plants.

Mutualisms and Behaviour

Tetraponera species are generally defined by the myrmecophytes that they inhabit and the mutualistic relationship they share. These host plants always have hollow thorns or branches in which the ants can live and form a colony

Colony

In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception....

. Also the myrmecophytes provide energy rich food sources such as extrafloral nectar (EFN) and/or food bodies (FB). For all Tetraponera species there are gut symbionts that allow them to digest amino acid

Amino acid

Amino acids are molecules containing an amine group, a carboxylic acid group and a side-chain that varies between different amino acids. The key elements of an amino acid are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen...

 deficient food such as that provided by their host plants, these gut bacteria are especially important for the species that only survive on the myrmecophyte EFNs or FBs.

All Tetraponera provide protection for their host plants through aggressive nature towards other insects and trimming leaves/branches of neighbouring plants. Living in hollow structures of the plants allows the ants to detect vibrations when larger insects land on the plant or workers on patrol visually detect smaller intruders. Once detected sophisticated pheromone

Pheromone

A pheromone is a secreted or excreted chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species. Pheromones are chemicals capable of acting outside the body of the secreting individual to impact the behavior of the receiving individual...

 systems allow Tetraponera to quickly outnumber and overpower any invaders. Most insect invaders are killed and discarded by Tetraponera workers such as caterpillars and aphids but some are killed and consumed. The insects that take the most time and effort to kill are generally consumed; these are mostly katydids or leaf beetles.

As well as assaulting and killing insects that attack their host plant Tetraponera will attack any mammals that present a threat as well. Inflicting the mammals with painful stings will usually deter them from attacking the plant.

In some arboreal ant species, not just Tetraponera, a third partner in ant-myrmecophyte mutualisms is Hemiptera

Hemiptera

Hemiptera is an order of insects most often known as the true bugs , comprising around 50,000–80,000 species of cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, shield bugs, and others...

 trophobionts

Trophobiosis

Trophobiosis is a symbiotic association between organisms where food is obtained or provided. The provider of food in the association is referred to as a trophobiont....

. These insects provide a possible third source of food for the ants, in return the ants feed and “nurture” the Hemiptera inside their colony

Colony (biology)

In biology, a colony reference to several individual organisms of the same species living closely together, usually for mutual benefit, such as stronger defense or the ability to attack bigger prey. Some insects live only in colonies...

.

Distribution

Tetraponera are found commonly in the warmer regions of Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

 and Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. Different species of Tetraponera are associated with different plant species. The most common myrmecophytes for Tetraponera are acacias but there is a wide variety of hosts for this genus including bamboos

Bamboo

Bamboo is a group of perennial evergreens in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family....

 and lianas. Tetraponera trim neighbouring plants to prevent any intrusion of ants or caterpillars from those plants and to reduce resource competition for their host

Host (biology)

In biology, a host is an organism that harbors a parasite, or a mutual or commensal symbiont, typically providing nourishment and shelter. In botany, a host plant is one that supplies food resources and substrate for certain insects or other fauna...

. Tetraponera will only leave their myrmecophyte to start a new colony on a different host, a queen

Queen ant

A queen ant is an adult, reproducing female ant in an ant colony; generally she will be the mother of all the other ants in that colony. Some female ants do not need to mate to produce offspring, reproducing through asexual parthenogenesis or cloning and all of those offspring will be female.Ant...

 and a number of workers

Ant

Ants are social insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the mid-Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. More than...

 will leave the old host plant to allow the colony to continue to expand.

Life Cycle and Castes

Tetraponera like most ants have one or a few queens that are the only females to reproduce in a colony. The sterile

Sterility (physiology)

Sterility is the physiological inability to effect sexual reproduction in a living thing, members of whose kind have been produced sexually. The term may be used in reference to* types of organism, such as the mule, a sterile hybrid;...

 workers are all females that forage for food and defend the colony. Males are produced only during certain times of the year and disperse to mate with virgins queens from other colonies. Since ants are haplodiploid they can control what sex their offspring will be; an unfertilised egg will become a male while a fertilised egg will be female. This reliably restricts the production of male alates to the species's matihg season, when the winged virgin queens and males fly from their home colonies to mate and start new colonies.

The eggs produced by the queen hatch into larvae

Larvae

In Roman mythology, lemures were shades or spirits of the restless or malignant dead, and are probably cognate with an extended sense of larvae as disturbing or frightening...

 which are cared for inside the colony, protected from any predators by the workers. The amount of care each female larva receives determines its fate as a worker or a new queen; all males are drones. When a new colony is formed eggs are initially produced at a low rate, but this quickly increases in the second to fourth years, ensure that there are enough workers to protect and provide for the growing colony.

Species List

• Tetraponera aethiops Smith, 1877
• Tetraponera aitkenii (Forel, 1902)
• Tetraponera allaborans (Walker, 1859)
• Tetraponera ambigua (Emery, 1895)
• Tetraponera andrei (Mayr, 1895)
• Tetraponera angusta (Arnold, 1949)
• Tetraponera angustata (Mayr, 1868)
• Tetraponera anthracina (Santschi, 1910)
• Tetraponera arrogans (Santschi, 1911)
• Tetraponera atra Donisthorpe, 1949
• Tetraponera attenuata Smith, 1877
• Tetraponera bidentata (Karavaiev, 1933)
• Tetraponera bifoveolata (Mayr, 1895)
• Tetraponera binghami (Forel, 1902)
• Tetraponera birmana (Forel, 1902)
• Tetraponera braunsi (Forel, 1913)
• Tetraponera brevicornis (Emery, 1900)
• Tetraponera capensis (Smith, 1858)
• Tetraponera carbonaria (Smith, 1863)
• Tetraponera claveaui (Santschi, 1913)
• Tetraponera clypeata (Emery, 1886)
• Tetraponera demens (Santschi, 1911)
• Tetraponera dentifera (Karavaiev, 1933)
• Tetraponera diana (Santschi, 1911)
• Tetraponera difficilis (Emery, 1900)
• Tetraponera dilatata (Karavaiev, 1933)
• Tetraponera emacerata (Santschi, 1911)
• Tetraponera emeryi (Forel, 1911)
• Tetraponera encephala (Santschi, 1919)
• Tetraponera erythraea (Emery, 1895)
• Tetraponera exasciata (Forel, 1892)
• Tetraponera fictrix (Forel, 1897)
• Tetraponera flexuosa (Santschi, 1911)
• Tetraponera fulva (Viehmeyer, 1916)
• Tetraponera gerdae (Stitz, 1911)
• Tetraponera grandidieri (Forel, 1891)
• Tetraponera humerosa (Emery, 1900)
• Tetraponera hysterica (Forel, 1892)
• Tetraponera klebsi (Wheeler, 1915)
• Tetraponera lacrimarum (Wheeler, 1915)
• Tetraponera laeviceps (Smith, 1877)
• Tetraponera latifrons (Emery, 1912)
• Tetraponera ledouxi Terron, 1969
• Tetraponera lemoulti (Santschi, 1920)
• Tetraponera liengmei (Forel, 1894)
• Tetraponera maffini Donisthorpe, 1948
• Tetraponera mandibularis (Emery, 1895)
• Tetraponera mayri (Forel, 1901)
• Tetraponera microcarpa Wu & Wang, 1990
• Tetraponera minuta (Jerdon, 1851)
• Tetraponera mocquerysi (Andre, 1890)
• Tetraponera modesta (Smith, 1860)
• Tetraponera monardi (Santschi, 1937)
• Tetraponera morondaviensis (Forel, 1891)
• Tetraponera nasuta Bernard, 1953
• Tetraponera natalensis (Smith, 1858)
• Tetraponera nicobarensis (Forel, 1903)
• Tetraponera nigra (Jerdon, 1851)
• Tetraponera nitens (Stitz, 1925)
• Tetraponera nitida (Smith, 1860)
• Tetraponera ocellata (Mayr, 1868)
• Tetraponera oligocenica (Theobald, 1937)
• Tetraponera ophthalmica (Emery, 1912)
• Tetraponera penzigi (Mayr, 1904)
• Tetraponera perlonga Santschi, 1928
• Tetraponera petiolata Smith, 1877
• Tetraponera pilosa (Smith, 1858)
• Tetraponera platynota (Karavaiev, 1933)
• Tetraponera plicatidens (Santschi, 1926)
• Tetraponera poultoni Donisthorpe, 1931
• Tetraponera prelli (Forel, 1911)
• Tetraponera punctulata Smith, 1877
• Tetraponera rakotonis (Forel, 1891)
• Tetraponera rufipes (Jerdon, 1851)
• Tetraponera rufonigra (Jerdon, 1851)
• Tetraponera sahlbergii (Forel, 1887)
• Tetraponera schulthessi (Santschi, 1915)
• Tetraponera scotti Donisthorpe, 1931
• Tetraponera siggi (Forel, 1902)
• Tetraponera simplex (Mayr, 1868)
• Tetraponera stipitum (Forel, 1912)
• Tetraponera tessmanni (Stitz, 1910)
• Tetraponera thagatensis (Forel, 1902)
• Tetraponera triangularis (Stitz, 1910)
• Tetraponera zavattarii (Menozzi, 1939)