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Formiciinae
Formiciinae is an extinct subfamily of ants known from Eocene deposits in Europe and North America. Genera *Formiciinae Lutz, 1986 **Formiciini Lutz, 1986 ***''Titanomyrma'' Archibald, ''et al.'', 2011 ****''Titanomyrma gigantea'' (Lutz, 1986) ****''Titanomyrma lubei'' Archibald, ''et al.'', 2011 ****''Titanomyrma simillima'' (Lutz, 1986) ***'' Formicium'' Westwood, 1854 (collective group genus) ****''Formicium berryi'' (Carpenter, 1929) ****''Formicium brodiei'' Westwood, 1854 ****''Formicium mirabile'' (Cockerell, 1920) The type genus is '' Formicium'' with the genus ''Titanomyrma'' being described in 2011. ''Formicium'' includes the described species which are known from fossil wings only. ''Formicium'' is known from three species. ''Formicium mirabile'', named by Theodore D. A. Cockerell in 1920, and ''Formicium brodiei'', named by John O. Westwood in 1854, are both known from fore wings found in the middle Eocene of Bournemouth, Dorset, England. The third species ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Formiciinae
Formiciinae is an extinct subfamily of ants known from Eocene deposits in Europe and North America. Genera *Formiciinae Lutz, 1986 **Formiciini Lutz, 1986 ***''Titanomyrma'' Archibald, ''et al.'', 2011 ****''Titanomyrma gigantea'' (Lutz, 1986) ****''Titanomyrma lubei'' Archibald, ''et al.'', 2011 ****''Titanomyrma simillima'' (Lutz, 1986) ***'' Formicium'' Westwood, 1854 (collective group genus) ****''Formicium berryi'' (Carpenter, 1929) ****''Formicium brodiei'' Westwood, 1854 ****''Formicium mirabile'' (Cockerell, 1920) The type genus is '' Formicium'' with the genus ''Titanomyrma'' being described in 2011. ''Formicium'' includes the described species which are known from fossil wings only. ''Formicium'' is known from three species. ''Formicium mirabile'', named by Theodore D. A. Cockerell in 1920, and ''Formicium brodiei'', named by John O. Westwood in 1854, are both known from fore wings found in the middle Eocene of Bournemouth, Dorset, England. The third species ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Formicium
''Formicium'' is an extinct collective genus of giant ants in the Formicidae subfamily Formiciinae. The genus currently contains three species, ''Formicium berryi'', ''Formicium brodiei'', and ''Formicium mirabile''. All three species were described from Eocene aged sediments. History and classification The collective genus ''Formicium'' was first established by English entomologist and archaeologist John O. Westwood in 1854. It was originally described from isolated fossil forewings, with full queens, drones, and workers being described from Germany later. Until 2011, the genus included five species, however the two German species have been moved from ''Formicium'' and placed in the related genus ''Titanomyrma'' as ''T. giganteum'' and ''T. simillimum'' respectively. The wingspan of the females is among the largest known among ants. The size of the specimens is impressive, with a body length of 4–7 cm and wing span of up to 15 cm. The species ''Formicium mirabile'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ant Subfamilies
Ants (family Formicidae in the order Hymenoptera) are the most species-rich of all social insects, with more than 12,000 described species and many others awaiting description. Formicidae is divided into 21 subfamilies, of which 17 contain extant taxa, while four are exclusively fossil. Ants have come to occupy virtually all major terrestrial habitats, with the exception of tundra and cold ever-wet forests. They display a wide range of social behaviors, foraging habits and associations with other organisms, which has generated scientific and public interest. Clades Beginning in the 1990s, molecular ( DNA sequence) data have come to play a central role in attempts to reconstruct the ant "tree of life". Molecular phylogenetic analyses based on multiple nuclear genes have yielded robust results that reinforce some preexisting views but overturn others – and suggest that there has been considerable morphological convergence among some ant lineages. Molecular data provid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Formicinae
The Formicinae are a subfamily within the Formicidae containing ants of moderate evolutionary development. Formicines retain some primitive features, such as the presence of cocoons around pupae, the presence of ocelli in workers, and little tendency toward reduction of palp or antennal segmentation in most species, except subterranean groups. Extreme modification of mandibles is rare, except in the genera ''Myrmoteras'' and ''Polyergus''. However, some members show considerable evolutionary advancement in behaviors such as slave-making and symbiosis with root-feeding hemipterans. Finally, all formicines have very reduced stings and enlarged venom reservoirs, with the venom gland, specialized (uniquely among ants) for the production of formic acid. All members of the Formicinae "have a one-segmented petiole in the form of a vertical scale". Identification Formicine ants have a single node-like or scale-like petiole (postpetiole entirely lacking) and the apex of the a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Titanomyrma
''Titanomyrma'' is a genus of prehistoric giant ant. The latest species to be discovered, ''T. lubei'', was described in 2011, when a 49.5-million-year-old fossilized winged queen ant, comparable in size to hummingbirds, was found in Wyoming, United States. This fossil is the first fossil of a giant ant found in the Western Hemisphere. The presence of ''Titanomyrma'' in North America is considered to indicate "the first reported cross-Arctic dispersal by a thermophile, thermophilic insect group". Another fossil species of this genus, ''T. gigantea'', is the largest-known fossil or extant taxon, extant species of giant ant in the world. Discovery The fossil ant ''Titanomyrma lubei'' was discovered in ancient lake sediments in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, DMNS locality 784, Farson Fish Beds, Laney Member of the Green River Formation; Sweetwater County, Wyoming, Sweetwater County, Wyoming, USA by Louis Lube, the collector and donor of the holotype specimen. The fossil i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bournemouth
Bournemouth () is a coastal resort town in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council area of Dorset, England. At the 2011 census, the town had a population of 183,491, making it the largest town in Dorset. It is situated on the English south coast, equidistant () from Dorchester and Southampton. Bournemouth is part of the South East Dorset conurbation, which has a population of 465,000. Before it was founded in 1810 by Lewis Tregonwell, the area was a deserted heathland occasionally visited by fishermen and smugglers. Initially marketed as a health resort, the town received a boost when it appeared in Augustus Granville's 1841 book, ''The Spas of England''. Bournemouth's growth accelerated with the arrival of the railway, and it became a town in 1870. Part of the historic county of Hampshire, Bournemouth joined Dorset for administrative purposes following the reorganisation of local government in 1974. Through local government changes in 1997, the town began to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fossil Ant Taxa
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, Seashell, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in #Resin, amber, hair, petrified wood and DNA remnants. The totality of fossils is known as the ''fossil record''. Paleontology is the study of fossils: their age, method of formation, and evolutionary significance. Specimens are usually considered to be fossils if they are over 10,000 years old. The oldest fossils are around 3.48 billion years old to 4.1 billion years old. Early edition, published online before print. The observation in the 19th century that certain fossils were associated with certain rock stratum, strata led to the recognition of a geological timescale and the relative ages of different fossils. The development of radiometric dating techniques in the early 20th century allowed scientists to quantitativ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eocene Insects
The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes from the Ancient Greek (''ēṓs'', "dawn") and (''kainós'', "new") and refers to the "dawn" of modern ('new') fauna that appeared during the epoch. The Eocene spans the time from the end of the Paleocene Epoch to the beginning of the Oligocene Epoch. The start of the Eocene is marked by a brief period in which the concentration of the carbon isotope 13C in the atmosphere was exceptionally low in comparison with the more common isotope 12C. The end is set at a major extinction event called the ''Grande Coupure'' (the "Great Break" in continuity) or the Eocene–Oligocene extinction event, which may be related to the impact of one or more large bolides in Siberia and in what is now Chesapeake Bay. As with other geologic periods, the strata that define the start and end of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Atlantic
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe and Asia from the "New World" of the Americas in the European perception of the World. The Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Europe and Africa to the east, and North and South America to the west. As one component of the interconnected World Ocean, it is connected in the north to the Arctic Ocean, to the Pacific Ocean in the southwest, the Indian Ocean in the southeast, and the Southern Ocean in the south (other definitions describe the Atlantic as extending southward to Antarctica). The Atlantic Ocean is divided in two parts, by the Equatorial Counter Current, with the North(ern) Atlantic Ocean and the South(ern) Atlantic Ocean split at about 8°N. Scientific explorations of the Atlan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesic Habitat
In ecology, a mesic habitat is a type of habitat with a moderate or well-balanced supply of moisture, e.g., a mesic forest, a temperate hardwood forest, or dry-mesic prairie. Mesic habitats transition to xeric shrublands Deserts and xeric shrublands are a biome defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. Deserts and xeric (ancient Greek xērós, “dry") shrublands form the largest terrestrial biome, covering 19% of Earth's land surface area. Ecoregions in this ... in a non-linear fashion, which is evidence of a threshold. Mesic is one of a triad of terms used to describe the amount of water in a habitat. The others are xeric and hydric. Further examples of mesic habitats include streamsides, wet meadows, springs, seeps, irrigated fields, and high elevation habitats. These habitats effectively provide drought insurance as land at higher elevations warms due to seasonal or other change. Healthy mesic habitats act like sponges in that they store water in such a way that it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dorylus Wilverthi
''Dorylus'', also known as driver ants, safari ants, or siafu, is a large genus of army ants found primarily in central and east Africa, although the range also extends to southern Africa and tropical Asia. The term siafu is a loanword from Swahili, and is one of numerous similar words from regional Bantu languages used by indigenous peoples to describe various species of these ants. Unlike the New World members of the former subfamily Ecitoninae (now Dorylinae), members of this genus form temporary subterranean bivouacs in underground cavities which they excavate and inhabit - either for a few days or up to three months. Also unlike some New World army ants, driver ants are not specialized predators of other species of ant, instead being more generalistic with a diet consisting of a diversity of arthropods. Colonies are enormous compared to other army ants and can contain over 20 million individuals. As with their American counterparts, workers exhibit caste polymorphism with t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilcox Formation
The Wilcox Formation is a geologic formation in Tennessee. It preserves fossils dating back to the Paleogene period. The first hydrocarbon discover in the formation occurred in 1928, onshore Texas. Subsequent field discoveries included the Seven Sisters Field, the Fandando Field , and in 1940 the Sheridan Field in Colorado County, Texas. Notable offshore discoveries within the formation include BAHA No. 2, and in 2004, the giant Jack Field. See also * List of fossiliferous stratigraphic units in Tennessee * Paleontology in Tennessee * Jack 2 * Wilcox Group The Wilcox Group is an important geologic group in the Gulf of Mexico Basin and surrounding onshore areas from Mexico and Texas to Louisiana and Alabama. The group ranges in age from Paleocene to Eocene and is in Texas subdivided into the Calver ... References * Paleogene Louisiana Paleogene geology of Tennessee {{Tennessee-geologic-formation-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
