Tapinoma simrothi Krausse, 1911

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, Annales Zoologici 70 (4), pp. 533-560 : 537

Tapinoma simrothi Krausse, 1911

( Fig. 3 A–C, 4 A–C)

Tapinoma erraticum var. simrothi Krausse, 1911: 18 (w.) Italy (Sardinia). Palearctic.

Diagnosis. Worker. Anterior clypeal margin with a slit-like median notch; scapes relatively long, when laid back from their insertions surpass posterior margin of head by about one third of scape length; funicular segments at least twice as long as broad; body surfaces covered with dense appressed pubescence; body color uniformly dark brown to black with legs including tarsi uniformly brownish.

Material examined. Qatar, Doha, Al-Rayyan, 12.iii.2005, (M.S. Abdel-Dayem leg.), 8w, ( KSMA) .

Geographic distribution. A Palearctic species, distributed across northern and southern Mediterranean Basin ( Sharaf 2006) and eastwards to most of Arabian Peninsula ( Collingwood 1985, Collingwood and Agosti 1996, Collingwood et al. 1997), Iran and Afghanistan. This material represents the first record for Qatar.

Ecological and biological notes. Tapinoma simrothi was observed in Riyadh Province ( KSA) nesting among roots of graminae plants, attending unidentified mealybugs under a discarded carpet, and coexisting with Solenopsis abdita Thompson, 1989 (Senior synonym of S. saudiensis Sharaf and Aldawood, 2011 ( Sharaf et al. 2020 c)). The species is also known to attend aphids, protecting these insects from predators (Karami-jamour et al. 2018).