New distributional records of Lioponera daikoku (Terayama, 1996) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Dorylinae) from Japan

Abstract

A rare and Japanese endemic species Lioponera daikoku (Terayama, 1996) was recorded for the first time from Yakushima Island, Shikoku and a locality of Honshu. According to those collecting records, overwintering of L. daikoku males and females in the nest after emergence and their nuptial flight during the following spring were suggested.

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New distributional records of Lioponera daikoku (Terayama, 1996)
(Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Dorylinae) from Japan
Yu HISASUE1, Naoto IDOGAWA2, Shougo MAKITA3 & Naomichi TSUJI1
1Entomological Laboratory, Graduate School of Bioresource and Bioenvironmental Sciences, Kyushu University,
Motooka 744, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka-shi, 819-0395 Japan
2Laboratory of Insect Ecology, Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Kitashirakawa-oiwakecho,
Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan
3Laboratory of Entomology, Faculty of Agriculture, Kagawa University, Miki-cho, Japan
1E-mail: hybrizonist@gmail.com
久末遊1・井戸川直人2・蒔田将吾3・辻尚道1：クロクビレハリアリの新産地
1 九州大学大学院昆虫学研究室
2 京都大学大学院昆虫生態学研究室
3 香川大学農学部昆虫生態学研究室
Abstract. A rare and Japanese endemic species Lioponera daikoku (Terayama, 1996) was recorded for the first
time from Yakushima Island, Shikoku and a locality of Honshu. According to those collecting records,
overwintering of L. daikoku males and females in the nest after emergence and their nuptial flight during the
following spring were suggested.
The genus Lioponera Mayr, 1879 is a group of rare predatory doryline ants, including 73 species known from
the Palearctic, Afrotropical, Malagasy, Indomalayan and Australasian regions (Borowiec 2016). This genus had
been synonymized with the genus Cerapachys (e. g. Brown 1975), but was resurrected by recent molecular
phylogenetic analyses (Borowiec 2016). Most congeners of Lioponera are known as predators of ants feeding on
larvae of the subfamily Myrmicinae (Hölldobler 1982; Idogawa & Dobata 2018; Ramage et al. 2019), however,
only a few their collecting records have been accumulated to date. Among them, Lioponera daikoku (Terayama,
1996) is endemic to Japan and which is sporadically collected from Honshu (Shizuoka, Kyoto, Awajishima Is.),
Kyushu (Fukuoka), Amami-Oshima Is. and Okinawa Is. (Myrmecological society of Japan 1991; Terayama et al.
1994, 2009; Terayama 1996; Tamego 2009). Nests of Lioponera are found in a variety of microhabitats, including
soil, under stones and in rotting logs (Wilson 1958; Brown 1975), and also in the cavities of dead bamboo stems
(Idogawa & Dobata 2018). This species has been considered to be a very rare species because they had been
collected only few times in the past even so its wide distributional range, but recently many individuals have been
collected from Honshu, Shikoku and Yakushima Is. In this paper, we report additional records of this species in

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Japan based on the individuals collected by the authors with some ecological findings. The distribution of this
species, including known records, is also shown. The examined specimens used in this paper are deposited in
Entomological laboratory, Faculty of Agriculture, Kyushu University (ELKU) and personal collection of Mr. K.
Sadahiro (CKS).
Lioponera daikoku (Terayama, 1996) (Fig. 1)
[Honshu] Mie Pref.: 3w (3 workers), Kumano City, Hobo Town, 18. III. 2015, N. Tsuji (ELKU). [Shikoku]
Ehime Pref.: 1af (1 alate female), 3w, Matsuyama City, Shiroyama Park, 10. XI. 2017, N. Idogawa (ELKU); 1w,
same data but different date and collector, 11. XI. 2017, Y. Hisasue (ELKU). Kochi Pref.: 1af, 4♂, Tosashimizu
City, Cape Ashizuri, 13. XII. 2018, S. Makita (CKS); 4♂, same data but different collector, K. Sadahiro (CKS).
[Yakushima Is.] 1♂, Anbo, 2. V. 2018, Y. Hisasue (ELKU).
Fig. 1. Habitus of L. daikoku. A, B-queen. C, D-male. E, F-worker. A, C, E-head in frontal view. B, D, F-lateral
habitus.
Distribution. Honshu (Shizuoka, Mie, Kyoto), Awajishima Is., Shikoku (Ehime, Kochi), Kyushu (Fukuoka),

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Yakushima Is., Amami-Oshima Is., Okinawa Is. (Fig. 2). Distribution of Fukui Prefecture and Okinawa Is. by
Terayama & Kihara (1994) and JADG (2003) are miss plots (Terayama, personal communication).
Fig. 2. Distribution of L. daikoku in Japan. Gray; known localities in previous studies, black: additional localities
added by present study (black).
Biological notes. Workers from Mie Prefecture was collected by beating dead branches hanging from a vine at
about 2.0 m above the ground. In Ehime Prefecture, its’ colony was collected from a fallen tree approximately 20
cm in diameter, which differs from the nesting environment of this species reported by Idogawa & Dobata (2018).
However, the reason for this difference in the nesting environment is not clear. Additionally, Monomorium triviale,

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one of the prey species of Lioponera daikoku, heavily populated around the site where L. daikoku was found. In
the case of Kochi Prefecture, these individuals were collected from a hollow branch about 1.5 m high in a forest by
the sea. It is possible that these are members of the same colony because they were collected from branches of the
same tree and close in distance. The diameters of the branches where they were nesting were 2.1 and 2.2 mm. Male
from Yakushima Is. was collected by sweeping the forest edge. Despite many field surveys were carried out in
Yakushima Is., L. daikoku has not been recognized in ant fauna of Yakushima Island to date (Terayama & Yamane
1984; Hosoishi et al. 2007; Harada et al. 2009) and thus the present collecting record is remarkable. In addition, its
prey ant, Monomorium triviale have not been reported from Yakushima Island yet (Antmaps 2020). Whether the
prey species in Yakushima Is. is Monomorium or another genus should be verified in the future.
These records and previous observations (Idogawa & Dobata 2018) suggest that winged ants overwinter in the
nest after emeregence and take nuptial flight during the following spring.
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to Dr. Mamoru Terayama (University of Tokyo) for providing us with
valuable information on the distribution and literature of Lioponera daikoku; Mr. Kunio Sadahiro (Kagawa
University) for providing material for this study; Mr. Yusuke Tsuji (Kochi Prefecture) for the gift of the valuable
literature; Dr. Eisuke Hasegawa (Hokkaido University) for providing information about L. daikoku.
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