 Myrmecia was first established by Danish zoologist Johan Christian Fabricius in his 1804 publication Systema <unk> , in which seven species from the genus Formica were placed into the genus along with the description of four new species . Myrmecia has been classified into numerous families and subfamilies ; in 1858 British entomologist Frederick Smith placed it in the family <unk> , subfamily Myrmicidae . It was placed in the subfamily Ponerinae by Austrian entomologist Gustav Mayr in 1862 . This classification was short @-@ lived , as Mayr reclassified the genus into the subfamily Myrmicinae three years later . In 1877 , Italian entomologist Carlo Emery classified the genus into the newly established subfamily <unk> , family Myrmicidae . Smith , who had originally established Myrmicidae as a family in 1851 , reclassified it as a subfamily in 1858 . He would again treat it as a family in 1871 . Swiss myrmecologist Auguste Forel initially treated <unk> as a subfamily and classified Myrmecia as one of its constituent genera , but later placed it in Ponerinae . William H. <unk> placed the genus in the subfamily Myrmeciinae in 1905 , but it was later placed back in Ponerinae in 1910 by American entomologist William Morton Wheeler . In 1954 , Myrmecia was placed into Myrmeciinae ; this would be the last time the genus would be placed into a different ant subfamily . 
