Habitat:
P. exotica inhabits dry and dry-mesic woodlands with acid soils such as those formed from shale, chert, cherty clay or sandstone. It probably nests primarily in soil, but this ant is most easily captured as stray worker foragers (and occasional single queens) by extracting leaf litter. In Missouri, I usually collect it from
Vaccinium thickets in dry, pine-oak or open oak woodlands on south-facing slopes with cherty clay soil. I once found an entire colony under an approximately 1-ft. diameter, flat rock, on a sparsely wooded ridge in Lawrence, Kansas, after heavy rains several days in a row had completely saturated the subtending, clayey soil.
Natural History: Little known. Ponera species are all thought to be generalist predators of small, soft-bodied arthropods. Colony-founding queens forage (as most likely do all our ponerines) in soil and leaf litter. The above mentioned Kansas colony had about sixty workers and a single queen.
