Carebara vidua F Smith

queen - Type location South Africa (F Smith, 1858b: 179, male; Mayr, 1866b: 904, queen; Forel, 1901g: 392, worker); junior synonyms colossus (Gerstäcker, 1859: 263, queen; also Gerstäcker, 1862: 512, synonymy Mayr, 1866b: 904) from Mozambique; dux (F. Smith, 1858b: 179, queen) from South Africa; and abdominalis (Santschi, 1912d: 285, queen) from Kenya, British East Africa, by Alluaud; subspecies fur from Congo (Santschi, 1928f: 198, queen); all forms described (see Bolton, 1995) .

F Smith's (1858b) description is at . Mayr's (1866b) description of the queen and male is at . Gerstäcker's (1859) description of the colossus queen is at . Forel's (1901g) full description is at . Santschi's (1912d) description of the abdominalis queen is at . Santschi's (1928f) description of fur is at . Arnold (1916: 249) gave an illustrated translation and notes, these are is at , queen - and, male - .

Forel (1909b) recorded dux from Katanga by Lemaire.

Emery (1922f, Plate 4) gave comparative illustrations of the three forms.

At the end of December, 2008, I received an email from Ted MacRae - "Hi Brian, I ran across another couple of photos from South Africa - the attached are of a mating cluster at Borakalalo National Park in North West Province. Photos taken 25.xi.1999. Any help with ID would be greatly appreciated. Best regards, Ted". These appear to be a good match for the descriptions (Arnold translation, 1916, links above) and Emery's Plate 4. See his website at http://beetlesinthebush.wordpress.com/