Pheidole excellens Mayr

Note - speculatively, I have separated off Pheidole weissi as a distinct species and take species F995 as typical of excellens.

Soldier - Minor - Type location Ghana (Mayr, 1862: 744, soldier; Santschi, 1914d: 335, worker, note of collection, no description); subspecies fulvobasalis (Santschi, 1921c: 116, soldier & worker) from Benin; all but male described (see Bolton, 1995) .

Mayr's (1862) description is at . Santschi's (1921c) description of the fulvobasalis soldier is at .

Other records given by Wheeler (1922) included Guinea (Kindia and Conakry, F. Silvestri), Togo (at Bismarckburg) and Nigeria (Slave Coast). Bernard (1952) reported the finding of a single queen, probably of this species, from Nimba, Guinea; describing the species as a common western species.

Pheidole species F995 Nigeria specimens

Soldier - TL 7.92 mm, HL 2.72, HW 2.55, SL 1.03, PW 1.15
Minor - TL 3.80 mm, HL 0.82, HW 0.78, SL 0.93, PW 0.59
Colour red-brown, gaster darker; appearance dull because of dense puncturation all over, coarsest on head and fine posteriorly. Dense covering of moderately long, semi-prone, fine hairs. Propodeal spines of soldier relatively long, stout and upturned; petiole with a markedly emarginate narrow dorsal face; postpetiole strongly produced laterally to form a blunt triangular process.

In Nigeria it nests directly into soil, workers also collected in a mummified cocoa pod on the ground.