Tetraponera anthracina (Santschi)

Type location Congo (Sima anthracina, Santschi, 1910c: 355, worker; illustrated head in Santschi, 1911c: 352; Terron, 1968: 339, queen & male) collected at Combra Tora, by A. Weiss; all forms now described .

Santschi's (1910c) description is at . Terron's (1967: 339-348) illustrated, photographs, and whole body profile, including male and female castes1910c, study is at .

WORKER (Nigeria specimens, illustrated) - TL 6.46 mm, HL 1.18, HW 0.93, SL 0.62, PW 0.72
Colour dark red-brown, extremities orange. Shiny but with dense pubescence all over. Eye length 0.56 mm (0.47 of HL). Two ocelli.

TL 6.7-8.6 mm; from measurements of 849 individuals from Cameroun by Terron (1967, illustrated, photographs, and whole body profile, including male and female castes), who noted Santschi's original TL was 6.5-7 mm. Terron gave the colour as black, with yellow-brown extremities; body very finely punctuate.

Relatively common on cocoa throughout Nigeria, on up 1.5% of trees (Taylor, 1977; Taylor & Adedoyin, 1978), but the ants forage singly and little is known of its biology, other than it nests in dead wood with small colonies. Also found on native trees and herbaceous vegetation, cashew, coffee and kola (Taylor, 1977). Earlier from CRIN, as Sima anthracina, perhaps on 2-5% of cocoa in pkd collections from two cocoa blocks, W13/2 and W18/1 (Booker, 1968).

Described as occasionally found on Ghana cocoa, probably as "chance migrants", by Strickland (1951a). Later collected from cocoa canopy by Room (1971), where it was quite common, featuring in 31 of his 168 cocoa canopy collections. It was negatively associated with Oecophylla longinoda but otherwise he felt it was fairly randomly distributed high in the canopy. From cocoa mistletoe (Room, 1975). Found on cocoa at Kade by Majer, who found it in 45.2% of his 144 pkd samples, with 8-9 workers per sample (1975, 1976a, b, c) by Majer (1975), using pkd.

Terron (1967, 1969 & 1977) described castes, queen determination, parasitism, morphology and biology in Cameroun. Also in Cameroun, it was among the non-dominant species recorded in the Cameroun forest canopy studies at Campo by Dejean and colleagues. They noted it as nesting in the middle stratum only (hollowed branches) with 14 findings on 30 trees examined (11 findings were on the tree Dialium pachyphyllum, of which 15 were examined).

Wheeler (1922) listed several findings from Zaïre - St. Gabriel by Kohl; Congo da Lemba by H. Mayné (also in Forel, 1911g); Thysville and Lubutu by J. Bequaert; and Kinshasa [Stanleyville] by Lang & Chapin.

The photomontage is collated from http://www.antweb.org/specimen.do?name=casent0403412
Collection details - Central African Republic: Prefecture Sangha-Mbaéré; Parc National Dzanga-Ndoki, 38.6 km 173° S Lidjombo; 02°21'36"N 016°03'12"E. 350m. Collection Information: Collection codes: BLF4148. Date: 20-28 May 2001. Collected by: B.L.Fisher. Method: EC14 on low vegetation. Habitat: rainforest.