- Animals
- ›Arthropods
- ›Hexapods
- ›Insects
- ›Winged and Once-winged Insects
- ›Ants, Bees, Wasps, and Sawflies
- ›Narrow-waisted Wasps, Ants, and Bees
- ›Ants, Bees, and Stinging Wasps
- ›Formicoidea
- ›Ants
- ›Paraponerinae
Paraponera
Paraponera is a genus of ants and the only genus in the subfamily Paraponerinae. The name means "near-Ponera".
It consists of two species: the extant Paraponera clavata, also known as a bullet ant, found in the Neotropics, and the very small fossil species Paraponera dieteri known from Dominican amber (Early Miocene; 16-19 million years ago). Bullet ants are so named for the pain caused by their venomous stings. The intensely painful sting is toxic to invertebrates as well as vertebrates and a major component is the neurotoxic peptide poneratoxin.
2 branches of this genus, most-observed first
See this branch on the Wheel of Life →
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Paraponera in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 67987.