Published December 30, 2020 | Version v1
Taxonomic treatment Open

Camponotus xerxes Forel 1904

Description

Camponotus xerxes Forel, 1904 (Fig. 7 A–C)

Camponotus maculatus r. xerxes Forel, 1904 g: 424 (w.q.) Iran. Palearctic.

Diagnosis. Worker. A species with a high degree of polymorphism (Collingwood 1985, Collingwood and Agosti 1996, Sharaf et al. 2013). Large workers entirely dark brown to black except for the paler legs;

propodeum unicolorous dark with rest of mesosoma; underside of head without setae. Camponotus xerxes is closely related to C. fellah Emery, 1908 but can be distinguished by the absence of erect setae on the underside of head, whereas C. fellah has 1–10 setae (Ionescu-Hirsch, 2009).

Material examined. Qatar, Msaid Road, 09.iv.2005, 24 ° 59 N, 51 ° 33 E, (M.S. Abdel-Dayem leg.) 7w, (KSMA).

Geographic distribution. A Palearctic species originally described from Iran and widely spread in several countries in the Arabian Peninsula including the KSA (Collingwood 1985), Kuwait, Oman, UAE (Collingwood and Agosti 1996), Qatar (Abdel-Dayem 2007), Syria (Tohmé and Tohmé 2000), North Africa (Sharaf 2006), Turkey (Karaman and Aktaç 2013), and central Asia: Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (Radchenko 1997 a).

Ecological and biological notes. The seasonal foraging activity of this species stretches from March to October with a peak in September (Sharaf et al. 2013), where workers frequently forage on the milkweed tree, Calotropis procera (Aiton) W. T. Aiton (Apocynaceae). Collingwood (1985) mentioned that the species start foraging in the early evening in the KSA.

Notes

Published as part of Sharaf, Mostafa R., Abdel-Dayem, Mahmoud S., Mohamed, Amr A., Fisher, Brian L. & Aldawood, Abdulrahman S., 2020, A Preliminary Synopsis of the Ant Fauna (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of Qatar with Remarks on the Zoogeography, pp. 533-560 in Annales Zoologici 70 (4) on pages 539-540, DOI: 10.3161/00034541anz2020.70.4.005, http://zenodo.org/record/4433537

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Linked records

Additional details

Related works

Biodiversity

Collection code
KSMA
Event date
2005-04-09
Verbatim event date
2005-04-09
Scientific name authorship
Forel
Kingdom
Animalia
Phylum
Arthropoda
Order
Hymenoptera
Family
Formicidae
Genus
Camponotus
Species
xerxes
Taxon rank
species
Taxonomic concept label
Camponotus xerxes Forel, 1904 sec. Sharaf, Abdel-Dayem, Mohamed, Fisher & Aldawood, 2020

References

  • Collingwood, C. A. 1985. Hymenoptera: Fam. Formicidae of Saudi Arabia. Fauna of Saudi Arabia, 7: 230 - 302.
  • Collingwood, C. A. and Agosti, D. 1996. Formicidae (Insecta: Hymenoptera) of Saudi Arabia (Part 2). Fauna of Arabia, 15: 300 - 385.
  • Sharaf, M. R., Abdeldayem, M. S., Aldhafer, H. & A. S. Aldawood. 2013. The ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of Rawdhat Khorim nature preserve, Saudi Arabia, with description of a new species of the genus Tetramorium Mayr. Zootaxa, 3709 (6): 565 - 580.
  • Ionescu-Hirsch, A. 2009. An annotated list of Camponotus of Israel, with a key and descriptions of new species. Israel Journal of Entomology, 39: 57 - 98.
  • Abdel-Dayem, M. S. 2007. Plant-Insect Relationship in Prosopis cineraria. P. 69 - 126. In: Abdel Bary EMM, Fahmi GM, Althani NJ, Althani RF and Abdel-Dayem MS (eds) The Ghaf Tree Prosopis cineraria in Qatar. National Council for Culture, Arts and Heritage; Doha, Qatar. 1 st. ed., 165 pp.
  • Tohme, G. and H. Tohme. 2000. Redescription de Camponotus oasium Forel, 1890, de C. fellah Emery, 1908, de C. sanctus Forel, 1904 et description de C. palmyrensis n. sp., quatre fourmis du Liban et de la Syrie. Bulletin de la Societe entomologique de France, 105: 387 - 394.
  • Sharaf, M. R. 2006. Taxonomic and ecological studies on family Formicidae (Order: Hymenoptera) in Egypt including some protectorates with a study of some insect fauna associated with ant species [unpublished thesis]. Cairo: Ain Shams University, Faculty of Science, Entomology Department, 340 pp.
  • Karaman, C. and N. Aktac. 2013. Descriptions of four new species of Camponotus Mayr (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), with a key for the worker caste of the Camponotus of Turkey. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society, 86: 36 - 56.
  • Radchenko, A. G. 1997 a. Review of ants of the subgenera Tanaemyrmex, Colobopsis, Myrmamblis, Myrmosericus, Orthonotomyrmex and Paramyrmamblis of the genus Camponotus (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) in the Asian Palearctic. Zoologicheskii Zhurnal, 76: 806 - 815.