''Polyrhachis gracilior'' is a species of

ant Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22 ...

found in the southwest and northeast India. It is one of the few ants that build arboreal nests made of leaves stitched together using silk produced by their larvae. Originally described as a "race" of '' Polyrhachis furcata'', it was elevated to a full species by C T Bingham who noted differences in the shape of the spines. A species described from Travancore as ''weberi'' by

Horace Donisthorpe Horace St. John Kelly Donisthorpe (17 March 1870 – 22 April 1951) was an eccentric United Kingdom, British myrmecologist and coleopterist, memorable in part for his enthusiastic championing of the renaming of the genus ''Lasius'' after him as ...

in 1943, was identified as being identical to ''gracilior'' by

Barry Bolton Barry Bolton is an English myrmecologist, an expert on the classification, systematics, and taxonomy of ants, who long worked at the Natural History Museum, London. He is known especially for monographs on African and Asian ants, and for encyclo ...

. File:PolyrhachisGraciliorWithPupa.jpg, With a larva File:PolyrhachisGraciliorNest.jpg, Nest between leaves

References

External links

* Formicinae Insects described in 1893 Hymenoptera of Asia {{formicinae-stub