Dorylus (Rhogmus) fimbriatus
(Shuckard)
Type location Gambia (Rhogmus fimbriatus, Shuck.,
Shuckard, 1840c: 325, male, no locality given; Emery, 1895j, 736,
worker; Brauns, 1903: 294, queen); subspecies crampeli
(Santschi, 1919b: 232, male) from Congo, laevipodex
(Santschi, 1919b: 232, male) from Kenya, and poweri
(Forel, 1914d: 217, worker) from South Africa; all forms
known (see Bolton, 1995)
.
Shuckard's (1840c) description is at
.
F Smith (1859b: 4) gave -
.
Emery's (1895j) translation into German of Shuckard's (1840c)
description, with illustrations of the male, is at
.
Emery (1901c: 187) had an illustrated description of the worker
morphs - .
Forel's (1914d) description of poweri is at
.
Arnold (1915) gave full descriptions of all the life stages, with
an illustration of the queen, these are at
,
and .
The male description is a transcription of Shuckard's original
description. |
Nigeria specimens (Taylor, 1978b: 19). WORKER. TL
7.16-2.12 mm . Five morphs; largest HL 1.56, HW 1.40, SL 0.56, PW
0.87
Colour dark orange-brown. Head, alitrunk and petiole finely
reticulostriate, striations more marked dorsally. Scattered
hair-pits on all dorsal surfaces, coarser on head. Erect hairs
sparse but two pairs on propodeum, a few on both surfaces of the
petiole and gaster, very long on first sternite. Relatively
abundant pilosity on the dorsal alitrunk, petiole and all over
gaster. Mandibles with a moderate apical tooth, the subapical
tooth bluntly bifurcate and basal tooth reduced. Anterior clypeal
margin straight but projecting forward slightly. Alitrunk dorsum
flat. Subpetiolar process a small rear-curved triangle.
I collected it at the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria, Idi
Ayunre. from a tree stump and outside a ground nest, perhaps
migrating.
Wheeler (1922) listed findings from Guinea at Conakry
and Mamou (F. Silvestri), Ghana, Cameroun and many
other tropical African countries.
Schneirla (1971) noted it as inhabiting the "deep
subterranean zone". |
Santschi's
(1919b) brief description of crampeli notes only that the
male was somewhat smaller than the type, e.g. HW 4.4, and the
pygidium with paler pubescence. He separated laevipodex as
slightly more robust; the gaster up to 7.3 mm long, the anterior
wing 23 mm; the outer third of the mandible is not concave; the
pygidium without pubescence and the hairs are long, fine and
clear, so that the segment seems entirely smooth and shiny.
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The
photomontage of the laevipodex male is compiled from
http://www.antweb.org/specimen.do?name=casent0172638&project=
where it is denoted as a separate species, determined by W H
Gotwald (unpublished).
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