Word.ws English Dictionary

myrmicine

/ˈmɜː(ɹ)mɪsaɪn/US/ˈmɚmɪsin/

myrmicine adjective: of or pertaining to the ant subfamily Myrmicinae.

myrmicine: of or pertaining to the ant subfamily Myrmicinae
Image: Kjetil Fjellheim from Bergen, Norway, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

myrmicine (comparative more myrmicine, superlative most myrmicine)

  1. Of or pertaining to the ant subfamily Myrmicinae.
    • These data have been accumulated from the study of the specialized Myrmicine and Formicine ants of Europe and North America [...]1885, William Morton Wheeler, Collected Papers, volume 1, page 27
    • The discovery of tandem calling with pheromones in Leptothorax throws considerable light on the evolution of chemical recruitment techniques in myrmicine ants generally.1990, Bert Hölldobler, Edward O. Wilson, The Ants, page 274
  2. Of or pertaining to the ant genus Myrmica.

Noun

myrmicine (plural myrmicines)

  1. Any ant of the subfamily Myrmicinae.
    • Subfamily Myrmicinae
      […]Species of myrmicines are most likely to be confused with species of Leptanilla or Tetraponera because of the two-segmented petiole.1999, Steven O. Shattuck, Australian Ants: Their Biology and Identification, volume 3, page 122
    • The other dominant ant subfamilies were also present but with lesser importance (fig. 1.4). Toward the end of the ponerine expansion (Early Eocene), the myrmicines began to radiate, surpassing the ponerines in biomass and diversity.2007, Victor Rico-Gray, Paulo S. Oliveira, The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-Plant Interactions, page 12

Forms of myrmicine

Adjective
comparativemore myrmicine
superlativemost myrmicine
Noun
pluralmyrmicines

Origin of myrmicine

Borrowed from translingual Myrmicinae.

Questions about myrmicine

What does myrmicine mean?
Myrmicine means of or pertaining to the ant subfamily Myrmicinae.
What part of speech is myrmicine?
Myrmicine can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce myrmicine?
Myrmicine is pronounced /ˈmɜː(ɹ)mɪsaɪn/.

Words near myrmicine in the dictionary

  1. myrmeleontid
  2. myrmeleontids
  3. myrmeleontoid
  4. myrmeleontoids
  5. myrmicacin
  6. myrmicine
  7. myrmicines
  8. myrmidon
  9. myrmidonian
  10. myrmidons
  11. myrmillo

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: myrmicine (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “myrmicine.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/myrmicine. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.