Strongylognathus afer Emery, 1884

Lapeva-Gjonova, Albena & Radchenko, Alexander G., 2021, Ant genus Strongylognathus (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) in Bulgaria: a preliminary review, Biodiversity Data Journal 9, pp. 65742-65742 : 65742

Strongylognathus afer Emery, 1884

Strongylognathus afer Emery, 1884: 380, q, Algeria; Forel 1900: 279, w (in Key); Santschi 1910: 71, m; Emery 1909: 711; all subsequent authors.

Strongylognathus afer Emery, 1884: 380, q, Algeria; Forel 1900: 279, w (in Key); Santschi 1910: 71, m; Emery 1909: 711; all subsequent authors.

Materials

Type status: Other material. Occurrence: recordedBy: A. Lapeva-Gjonova; individualCount: 19; sex: workers; Taxon: scientificName: Strongylognathus afer; order: Hymenoptera ; family: Formicidae ; genus: Strongylognathus ; taxonRank: Species ; Location : country: Bulgaria; stateProvince: Haskovo; municipality: Madzharovo ; locality: Eastern Rhodopes , Gaberovo vill. ; minimumElevationInMeters: 535; locationRemarks: on the border of light oak forest, in a nest of Tetramorium hungaricum Röszler, 1935; decimalLatitude: 41.6297; decimalLongitude: 25.8940; Event : eventDate: 10-04-2013; Record Level: collectionCode: BFUS; basisOfRecord: PreservedSpecimen

Description

SEM images: Fig. 7

Conservation

Vulnerable D2 ver. 2.3 ( IUCN 2021)

Taxon discussion

Strongylognathus afer was described by Emery (1884), based on a single queen from Algeria, workers and males being later described from Algeria and Tunisia by Forel (1900) and Santschi (1910), respectively; finally, Sanetra and Güsten (2001) recorded this species in many localities in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. Strongylognathus afer , in all studied sites, infested colonies of Tetramorium semilaeve Andre, 1883 ( Sanetra and Güsten 2001). Workers of this species are very small, the propodeum bearing small and blunt tubercles instead of sharp dents and the head dorsum and mesosoma are generally smooth and shiny ( Forel 1900, Sanetra and Güsten 2001).

One nest sample of workers, together with the host species T. hungaricum , was collected in the Eastern Rhodopes on the border of light oak forest and a pasture with a southern exposure (Fig. 4) at an altitude about 550 m. Collected workers morphologically fit well with the main characteristic features of S. afer , but are even smaller than the specimens from Algeria and Morocco, as well as workers of S. minutus Radchenko, 1991 and, apparently, are the smallest known workers of the Strongylognathus huberi species-group (compare Table 1 and data in Radchenko 1991 and Sanetra and Güsten 2001).

Figures

Figure 7. Strongylognathus afer Emery, 1884, workers: a. head, dorsal view; b. body, lateral view.