Oecophylla smaragdina
Oecophylla smaragdina is a species of arboreal ant found in tropical Asia and Australia. These ants form colonies with multiple nests in trees, each nest being made of leaves stitched together using the silk produced by the ant larvae, hence the specific name oecophylla.

Muhammad Mahdi Karim · GFDL 1.2 · 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
- OecophyllaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At most 12 thousand years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Oecophylla smaragdina on record, most of them in the Holocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
1 occurrences- Holocene100%
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.
Oecophylla smaragdina and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Oecophylla smaragdina and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
26 taxa- Acicnemis fossilis1 site
- Anonychomyrma dimorpha1 site
- Calomyrmex laevissimus1 site
- Cataulacus resinosus1 site
- Colobopsis vitrea1 site
- Dolichoderus thoracicus1 site
- Lioponera suscitata1 site
- Odontomachus cephalotes1 site
- Odontomachus saevissimus1 site
- Parasyscia conservata1 site
- Pheidole plagiaria1 site
- Platythyrea parallela1 site
- Polyrhachis celebensis1 site
- Polyrhachis cincta1 site
- Polyrhachis circumdata1 site
- Polyrhachis continua1 site
- Polyrhachis decipiens1 site
- Polyrhachis erosispina1 site
- Polyrhachis excitata1 site
- Polyrhachis inclusa1 site
- Polyrhachis levior1 site
- Polyrhachis paromalus1 site
- Polyrhachis subfossa1 site
- Polyrhachis tibialis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Oecophylla smaragdina, 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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Oecophylla smaragdina
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Muhammad Mahdi Karim
- Licence
- GFDL 1.2
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Oecophylla smaragdina was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
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 itOecophylla through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Fabricius 1775)