Cardiocondyla wroughtonii ( Forel 1890 )

Seifert, Bernhard, 2024, A taxonomic revision of the ants of the Cardiocondyla wroughtonii group (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) with a checklist of the Cardiocondyla species of the world, Soil Organisms (London, England) 96 (2), pp. 113-144 : 128

Cardiocondyla wroughtonii ( Forel 1890)

Emeryia wroughtonii Forel 1890 [type investigation]

The species has been described from Pune (Poona)/ India. Investigated were the holotype (ergatoid male) and 3 worker paratypes labelled by Forel ‘Poona, Wroughton, sr feuiles Eugenia jambolana , B 4 ’, NHM Basel and one worker paratype, labelled by Forel himself ‘Wroughtonii Forel, Poona , Wroughton’ and by G.Mayr ‘Wroughtonii, Forel , Type’, NHM Wien. In his original description of wroughtonii, Forel erroneously considered the extremely deviating ergatoid male of this species as worker of a separate genus Emeryia that he believed to be a social parasite of Cardiocondyla . This ergatoid male was found together with workers and females of a Cardiocondyla species nesting in the space between the two layers of leaves of Eugenia jambolana in Poona / India ( Forel 1890). Later Forel corrected his mistake ( Forel 1892). Formally, the above-mentioned workers have no paratype status since the original description of Emeryia wroughtonii did not directly refer to them. However, their undoubted conspecifity with the holotype and their strong genetic relatedness give them a high taxonomic significance. This worker sample is allocated to the C. wroughtonii cluster with p =1.000 if run as wild-card in a LDA (for details see below).