Pheidole picata (Forel)
Soldier - 
Minor -
Type location Madagascar (Pheidole megacephala
var. picata, Forel, 1891b: 178, soldier & worker;
raised to species Emery, 1915j); subspecies bernhardae
(Emery, 1915j: 245, soldier & worker) and gietleni
(Forel, 1905b: 164, soldier & worker) from Madagascar (see
Bolton, 1995), soldier and worker described
 .
WORKER (translation of the Forel, 1891b) note -
"picata, new variety (of megacephala), small
dark brown variety with the sides of the head very convex and the
propodeal spines rather short coming from Antananarivo this
variety when examined alongside the type megacephala may
be a separate species".
Bernard (1952) noted that this species was spread across
Madagascar and the Seychelles (and other Indian Ocean Islands,
Wheeler, 1922), but was rare from African collections, citing it
from Congo (as Ph. punctulata var picata
by Santschi, 1910c: 370, at Brazzaville, by Weiss, in Wheeler,
1922; simply listed by name). He, however, recorded its finding in
Ivory Coast, Banco by Delamare-Debouteville. Importantly,
from Guinea it was abundant in the Mt. Nimba survey area.
At higher altitudes it was found on the crests (Nion, 1300 m;
Mount Tô, 1600 m), in the forest (T.184; B3-18, 1000 m;
north-east flank leaf litter by Villiers) and, less commonly lower
(N'Zo, 6 workers, 3 queens, one male) and Savanna (Ziéla, Kéoulenta).
Bernard described it as very variable, for instance the heads of
soldiers could be - round and brown, straight and black, more or
less incurved dorsally. Some soldiers resembled the variety gietleni.
However, the workers, and probably the queens, appeared uniform so
it was superfluous to create new names on the basis of such
polymorphic soldiers. [In this, Bernard, seems to contradict his
own summary, see the Genus
page, where he declared the uniformity of minors and workers
made soldiers the best morph for defining species]. He cautioned
that the odd distribution called for more investigation.
With the availability of the images of the type major, below, I strongly suspect the Bernard records, etc.,
apply to what I regard as Pheidole aurivillii. |
The
photomontage of the type is collated from