Buniapone is named after the Orang Bunian, a race of invisible forest beings in the traditional folklore of Malaysia, reflecting the hypogeic (meaning underground, from Greek hypó "under" + gaîa "earth") sylvan (meaning forest) habits, describing this ant species activity below the soil surface. The suffix -pone is derived from the subfamily name Ponerinae of these ants

Buniapone is restricted to Southern and Southeast Asia.

Indo-Australian Region: Borneo, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore.
Oriental Region: Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Vietnam.
Palaearctic Region: China.

Buniapone is a morphologically distinctive genus and its workers are readily identified by the following combination of characters: long and narrow toothed mandibles, blunt medial clypeal projection, greatly reduced eyes, obsolete metanotal groove, ovoid propodeal spiracles, complex metapleural gland orifice, and squamiform petiole.

Worker. Medium-sized (TL 5.5–6.5 mm; Emery, 1887)

Queen. Similar to worker, but larger (TL 9.25 mm; Emery, 1889) and winged.

Male. See description in Santschi (1928).

Larva. Not described.

Virtually nothing is known about the habits of Buniapone, other than that they are hypogeic.

They are presumably predatory, though their prey preferences are unknown.

From my experience in keeping them (quite unsuccessfully) before, I can that they enjoy water, honeywater, baby roaches and above all small termites.

Also extremely important, I noticed that the fastest development of brood happened when the humidity levels inside the nest was higher.

They can be found most frequently in the following habitats:

rainforest;

clay bank in mature wet forest;
river margin in wet forest;
bamboo forest.

It was observed a large numbers of Buniapone amblyops workers congregating at a palm oil bait sunk into the ground, suggesting that they are not strictly carnivorous and that they may employ some kind of nestmate recruitment to food sources, like their sister genus Paltothyreus.

The apparent sister relationship between Buniapone and Paltothyreus is a novel and surprising result which is nevertheless also strongly supported by morphology.

The apomorphies of the clypeus and metapleural gland orifice are shared between Buniapone and Paltothyreus, but that Buniapone lacks striate sculpturing and an armed hypopygium.

Buniapone is a medium-sized hypogeic ant restricted to Asia, while Paltothyreus is a very large epigeic ant restricted to Sub-Saharan Africa. Given their phylogenetic position within the Odontomachus group, it is clear that Buniapone is morphologically the more derived of the two genera. The most recent common ancestor of Buniapone and Paltothyreus was most likely a large epigeic ant like most members of the Odontomachus group.

Further information about the behavior of Buniapone would be invaluable in understanding the remarkable divergence between these two genera.

It suggested that a high helcium has an adaptive benefit in hypogeic ponerines, perhaps by enabling more efficient gaster curling while hunting in tight spaces.

All Ponerini with this character state are hypogeic: Boloponera, Buniapone, Centromyrmex, Dolioponera, Feroponera, Promyopias, and some Cryptopone.

Today, I received my first viable Buniapone amblyops colony! OMG! 10 or 11 workers, 1 small larvae and 1 Queen! So excited!

The weather worsen quickly, and the temperature dropped severely, and they took some time to arrive, which made me worry if they would arrive alive or not. Luckily all was fine.

the first thing I did, of course, was to offer them some honeywater, which they didn’t hesitate to take.

While they replenished their energies, I start prepping their new setup.

I went for a small size double nest, both with hydration chambers and soil.

But with a slight difference. The first nest has "Excavator” sand as substrate, the second nest has almost 100% pure clay.

Of course, after introducing the ants into their new outworld, they waste no time at all to explore their new surroundings, and have already started some nest costumization.

And to wrap up this first colony log, the most exciting news.

The truth is, I already had a Buniapone queen, which arrived few days before this colony. Unfortunately, all her brood didn’t make it. That is why I had to order this colony.

But by looking at them, I decided to introduce the lone queen. First, I grabbed a worker, and introduced her to the lone queen, and there was absolutely nothing but love and antennae bashing and acceptance.

The way was clear! So I introduced her to the rest of the colony and as expected, she was totally accepted!

Hope that the develop of this colony can get a great boost from having 2 queens now! Besides guarantying that if anything happens to any of them, the other can take over!

You can find both queens on this photo. One of the left (original colony queen) near the drinking station, and the introduced queen on the top center of the photo

Well, this is all for this log. Hope you have enjoyed a little bit of everything.

See you soon! Thank you for taking the time to read, and again, any questions, feel free to contact me!

Cheers!

For further reading on this species, I would recommend you go over to :

Photos and Info on Ants and Termites of Malaysia

The post is from 2013 but still a great read.

Buniapone (Pachycondyla) amblyops

The truly elusive Orange Ants

Polyrhachis mitrata

Polyrhachis cf. bicolor