Cerapachys

Wheeler, W. M., 1922, The ants collected by the American Museum Congo Expedition., Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 45, pp. 39-269 : 52

Cerapachys F. Smith

Worker.-Small ants with peculiar, long, subcylindrical body; the head excavated behind, with prominent, depressed posterior corners and very short clypeus, with which the closely approximated frontal carinae are fused. The latter are erect, leaving the articulations of the antennae exposed. The antennal fovea is bounded externally by a distinct carina. Mandibles with distinct, obscurely denticulate apical border. Antennae stout, 9- to 12-jointed, the scape incrassated distally, the terminal funicular joint large, swollen, oval or glandiform, at least as long as the three preceding joints together, thus forming a one-jointed club. Eyes small, sometimes wanting. Thorax with the premesonotal and mesoepinotal sutures absent or indistinct. Petiole and postpetiole not marginate on the sides, the latter strongly constricted off from the gaster which is largely formed by its first segment.

Female scarcely larger than the worker and very similar, sometimes apterous and ergatoid. Fore wings when present with a discoidal and a single cubital cell.

Male with the clypeus and frontal carinae much as in the female. Antennae filiform, 13-jointed; basal funicular joints short. Mesonotum without Mayrian furrows. Wing venation like that of the female.

The genus has been divided by Emery into four subgenera, distinguished by the number of antennal joints: Cerapachys , sensu stricto, having 12; Parasyscia, 11; Ooceraea, 10; and Syscia, 9. The distribution of these subgenera is peculiar. The species of Cerapachys , sensu stricto, are known to occur only in the Ethiopian, Malagasy, Indomalayan, and Papuan Regions; those of Parasyscia occur in Texas, Guatemala,Syria, Ceylon, India, and Burma; those of Syscia have been recorded from Ceylon, Singapore, New Guinea, Queensland, and Hawaii; while Ooceraea is known only from Ceylon. As these ants form small colonies and live a subterranean life, they are very rarely seen and this probably accounts for the peculiar discontinuous distribution in the accompanying map (Map 5). It seems hardly possible that species of Cerapachys , sensu latiore, are entirely lacking in South America, but none has been found in any of the many extensive collections that have been made on that continent. Practically all that is known of the habits of the genus is contained in a paper which I published many years ago on the Texan Parasyscia augusta ; Wheeler.1