Formicium
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Formicium Temporal range: Eocene |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Hymenoptera |
| Family: | Formicidae |
| Subfamily: | †Formiciinae |
| Genus: |
†Formicium Westwood, 1854 |
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Formicium is an extinct collective genus of giant ants in the Formicidae subfamily Formiciinae. The genus currently contains three species, Formicium berryi, Formicium brodiei, and Formicium mirabile. All three species were described from Eocene aged sediments.
The collective genus Formicium was first established by English entomologist and archaeologist John O. Westwood in 1854. It was originally described from isolated fossil forewings, with full queens, drones, and workers being described from Germany later. Until 2011, the genus included five species, however the two German species have been moved from Formicium and placed in the related genus Titanomyrma as T. giganteum and T. simillimum respectively. The wingspan of the females is among the largest known among ants. The size of the specimens is impressive, with a body length of 4–7 cm and wing span of up to 15 cm. The species Formicium mirabile, named by Theodore D. A. Cockerell in 1920, and Formicium brodiei, named by Westwood in 1854, are both known from fore-wings found in middle Eocene of Bournemouth, Dorset, England. The third species named, Formicium berryi was named by Frank M. Carpenter in 1929 from the middle Eocene Claiborne Formation in Puryear, Tennessee, USA, though he misidentified the formation as the Wilcox Formation. F. berryi was the first described occurrence of the genus and, until 2011, the subfamily, in North America.
As the wing structure of Formicidae is very plastic and can vary greatly even within a species and size between males and females can be notably different, the description of fossil species from wings alone is problematic. With the removal of the two German species described from full body fossils in 2011, Dr. Bruce Archibald and coauthors changed Formicium from a nominal genus to collective genus. They suggested it be used to contain species described from wings which do not have enough detail to place into a nominal genus such as Titanomyrma. As a collective genus, it does not contain a type species per the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, but is still retained as the type genus for the subfamily Formiciinae.
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