Meranoplus cordatus

Smith, F., 1858, Catalogue of the hymenopterous insects in the collection of the British Museum. Part VI. Formicidae., London: British Museum : 193

3. Meranoplus cordatus .

Worker. Length 2 lines. - Chestnut-red: the thorax with the anterior lateral angles acute, and armed posteriorly with four spines. The head and thorax paler than the abdomen, the head very delicately reticulated; the eyes small, black, and placed backwards on the sides of the head towards the vertex; the clypeus widely truncate in front. Thorax slightly rounded in the middle in front; the sides narrowed and rounded to the base of the metathorax; the posterior margin transverse, at each of its lateral angles a curved acute spine, with a shorter spine a little beyond them; the truncation of the metathorax with a short acute spine about the middle on each side. Abdomen: the first node, viewed laterally, is wedge-shaped, the second sub- quadrate, its posterior margin produced into an acute spine; the anterior margin of the first node truncate; the abdomen heart- shaped; the entire insect sprinkled with erect pale hairs.

Hab. Borneo (Sarawak). (Coll. W. W. Saunders, Esq.) This is probably the worker of M. castaneus .