Tetraponera anthracina (Santschi)
  Type location Congo (Sima
anthracina n. sp., Santschi, 1910c: 355, worker; illustrated head
in Santschi, 1911c: 352; in Tetraponera, Wheeler, 1922: 106;
Terron, 1968: 339, queen & male) collected at Combra Tora, by A.
Weiss; all forms now described  .
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 Nigeria specimens (Taylor, 1976: 39). WORKER. 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. Note - the worker I drew appears
from the type images on Antweb (2014) to have affinities with the
Santschi (1941d) Tetraponera
triangularis Stitz
stirps illota the type
locality of which, Ilokomeji, is only a few km from CRIN. It is,
however, smaller than the illota
worker and type photos of triangularis
are not yet on Antweb.
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 the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria, Idi Ayunre (as Sima
anthracina) perhaps on 2-5% of cocoa in pkd collections from two
cocoa blocks, W13/2 and W18/1 (Booker, 1968).
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.
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.
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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.
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Santschi's
(1910c) description is at 
Terron's (1967: 339-348) illustrated,
photographs, and whole body profile, including male and female castes,
study is at 
The
photomontage of the type worker is collated from 
The
photomontage is of a worker from 
The
photomontage is of a worker from 
The photomontage is collated from