Crematogaster striaticeps Forel

Sharaf, Mostafa R., Aldawood, Abdulrahman S. & Garcia, Francisco Hita, 2019, Review of the Arabian Crematogaster Lund (Hymenoptera, Formicidae), synoptic list, distribution, and description of two new species from Oman and Saudi Arabia, ZooKeys 898, pp. 27-81 : 27

Crematogaster striaticeps Forel stat. nov. Figure 30 A–C

Taxonomic history.

Crematogaster laestrygon striaticeps Forel, 1909: 104 (w.) Algeria; Santschi 1937: 308 (q., m.).

Combination in Crematogaster (Acrocoelia) : Emery 1922: 142.

Geographic range.

This species was described from Algeria and is also found in the neighboring countries of Tunisia and Lybia ( Borowiec 2014; Guénard et al. 2017; Janicki et al. 2017). In the Arabian Peninsula, it has been recorded from the KSA ( Collingwood 1985).

Remarks.

Crematogaster striaticeps was originally described as a subspecies of C. laestrygon but herein we treat this taxon as a good species. The main difference responsible for the decision to raise striaticeps to the specific rank is the presence of dense longitudinal striations on the entire cephalic surface whereas laestrygon has a smooth cephalic surface and longitudinal striations are feebly developed and restricted to the area in front of eyes.

We have been hesitant with this decision since both taxa are similar to other Afrotropical or Mediterranean Crematogaster taxa and it is not clear which taxonomic status they may assume after a thorough revision of the genus. However, since we established that C. laestrygon and C. striaticeps are not the same taxon, we propose to separate them by raising the latter to species rank to achieve clarity of their status for the Arabian region and future studies of its fauna.

Figures

Figure 30. C. striaticeps A body in profile B body in dorsal view C head in full-face view, CASENT 0908479 (Zach Lieberman), www. AntWeb. org.