Carebara

Carebara is a genus of ants in the subfamily Myrmicinae. It is one of the largest myrmicine genera with more than 200 species distributed worldwide in the tropics and the Afrotropical region. Many of them are very tiny cryptic soil and leaf-litter inhabitants. They nest in rotten wood to which the bark is still adherent in the Afrotropical region, or may be lestobiotic, nesting near other ant species. Some species are known to exist parasitically within termite nests. Little is known about the biology of the genus, but they are notable for the vast difference in size between queens and workers. In Tanzania's Lake Victoria, Arusha, and Morogoro Regions, Carebara queens are hunted and consumed; they are locally known as wadudu mafuta, meaning "fat insects".

Carebara

Uncredited · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
CrematogastriniPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 31 million years on record.

The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 37.71 Mya to 1.8 Mya.

Eocene — about 9 of 17 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 1 of 17 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 6 of 17 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 17 occurrencesPleistocene — about 1 of 17 occurrences38–37 Mya — about 1 occurrence37–36 Mya — about 3 occurrences36–35 Mya — about 3 occurrences35–33 Mya — about 2 occurrences28–27 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences27–26 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences26–25 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences25–23 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences23–22 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences17–16 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences16–15 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences15–14 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences14–12 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences12–11 Mya — about 1 occurrence11–9.8 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences9.8–8.6 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences8.6–7.3 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences7.3–6.1 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences6.1–4.8 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences3.6–2.3 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences2.3–1.1 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences33.9 Mya2.58 Mya38.4 Mya1.1 Mya

17 occurrences of Carebara on record. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

17 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

3 formations

Upper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°ECypris — 50.08°N, 12.54°ENiveau du gypse d'Aix — 43.52°N, 5.45°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Carebara has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 13 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Found in the same rock

2,180 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 15 sites for Carebara, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

13 references

Each of the 17 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 1 further reference is not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Carebara

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Credit
tunosemi
Licence
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
Commercial use
the licence does not allow it

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itCrematogastrini through timeThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Westwood 1840