Nylanderia bourbonica (Forel, 1886)

Material examined. Alate queens, Changi, 1.36206, 104.02525, 7 May 2020, mercury vapour lamp, ZRC ; alate queen, Pulau Semakau New Fragment, SMN2, 1°12’04.5’’N, 103°45’46.1’’E, 21-28 Nov 2013, J. Puniamoorthy et al. leg., replanted mangroves, malaise trap, Reg. 30285, ZRC _ BDP0015368 ; alate queen, same locality and collector as previous, 13-20 Aug 2012, replanted mangroves, malaise trap, Reg. 29431, ZRC _ BDP0015362; male, Pulau Ubin, PU 2, 1°24’39.1”N, 103°59’23.2”E, 22-29 Sep 2012, J. Puniamoorthy et al. leg., mangroves, malaise trap, Reg. 29489, ZRC _ BDP00008654 .

Material not physically examined. Unknown.

Literature. None. New record.

Localities. Changi; Pulau Semakau; Pulau Ubin.

Habitat/Ecology. A recognized tramp species that has spread nearly worldwide to tropical or subtropical areas mainly via human commerce (Wetterer 1998), N. bourbonica identified from Singapore appears to occur in a fairly broad range of habitats at varied levels of human disturbance. These habitats include disturbed secondary forest fragments in semi-urban settings, also replanted mangroves and old growth mangrove forests.

Remarks. At the time of writing, the examined material (comprising only winged alates) could not be confidently established as N. bourbonica with absolute certainty. The species appears to be morphologically variable across populations, and therein lies the possibility that some of these populations may actually be different, albeit closely-related, species. In view of this taxonomic conundrum, though there are slight differences between the morphology of the Singapore specimens and that of the type images, we tentatively consider the Singapore specimens to be conspecific. Species validity should be reassessed in future when more empirical evidence such as DNA is made available for global populations of N. bourbonica .