Crematogaster mimosae Santschi

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 mimosae Santschi Figure 27 A–C

Taxonomic history.

Crematogaster mimosae Santschi, 1914a: 87, fig. 11 (w.) Kenya: Menozzi 1939: 105 (q.).

Combination in Crematogaster ( Crematogaster) : Wheeler 1922: 841; in Crematogaster (Acrocoelia) : Emery 1922: 148; in Crematogaster ( Crematogaster) : Bolton 1995: 166.

Current subspecies: C. mimosae tenuipilis Santschi.

Geographic range.

Initially described from Kenya, in the Afrotropics this species is East African in its distribution found in Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Sudan, and Tanzania ( Guénard et al. 2017; Janicki et al. 2017). In the Arabian Peninsula, it was recorded from the KSA, Oman, the UAE and Yemen ( Collingwood 1985, Collingwood and Agosti 1996; Borowiec 2014; Sharaf et al. 2018) ( Fig. 25 ).

Remarks.

Crematogaster mimosae is one of four species of obligate acacia ants, which have been well studied in East Africa, mostly Kenya (e.g., Young et al. 1997; Martins 2010). From a taxonomic perspective, this is one of the “easy” cases within the genus in Arabia, thus very straightforwardly identifiable.

Figures

Figure 25. Distribution map of C. laestrygon, C. mimosae, C. oasium, and C. senegalensis.

Figure 27. C. mimosae A body in profile B body in dorsal view C head in full-face view, CASENT 0904507 (Will Ericson), www. AntWeb. org.