Camponotus oasium ninivae

AntWiki: The Ants --- Online
Camponotus oasium ninivae
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera
Family: Formicidae
Subfamily: Formicinae
Tribe: Camponotini
Genus: Camponotus
Species: C. oasium
Subspecies: C. oasium ninivae
Trinomial name
Camponotus oasium ninivae
Pisarski, 1971

Identification

Distribution

Distribution based on Regional Taxon Lists

Palaearctic Region: Iraq, Iran (type locality).

Distribution based on AntMaps

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Distribution based on AntWeb specimens

Check data from AntWeb

Countries Occupied

Number of countries occupied by this species based on AntWiki Regional Taxon Lists. In general, fewer countries occupied indicates a narrower range, while more countries indicates a more widespread species.
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Estimated Abundance

Relative abundance based on number of AntMaps records per species (this species within the purple bar). Fewer records (to the left) indicates a less abundant/encountered species while more records (to the right) indicates more abundant/encountered species.
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Biology

Castes

Nomenclature

The following information is derived from Barry Bolton's Online Catalogue of the Ants of the World.

  • ninivae. Camponotus (Tanaemyrmex) thoracicus subsp. ninivae Pisarski, 1971a: 674, figs. 10-14 (s.w.) IRAQ.
    • Subspecies of thoracicus: Pisarski, 1971b: 728; Bolton, 1995b: 113.
    • Junior synonym of sanctus: Radchenko, 1996b: 1202 (in key).
    • Junior synonym of oasium: Radchenko, 1997d: 809.
    • Subspecies of oasium: Khalili-Moghadam, et al. 2019: 166.

Taxonomic Notes

Khalili-Moghadam et al. (2019) - RADCHENKO (1997) treated Camponotus (Tanaemyrmex) thoracicus subsp. ninivae PISARSKI, 1971 as a synonym of Camponotus oasium FOREL, 1890; this point of view was repeated in BOLTON's (2019) catalogue. In our opinion this is at least a distinct subspecies if not a good species of the Camponotus oasium species-group. This group contains a lot of different infraspecific taxa, but many of them are probably more or less cryptic species. Our sample from Mavraz agrees well with the types of C. oasium ninivae described from Iraq and preserved in the Museum and Institute of Zoology, Polish Academy of sciences, Warsaw, Poland (available on AntWeb CASENT0911141, CASENT0917224 and CASENT0917225). Specimens of C. oasium ninivae differ from the types of C. oasium oasium FOREL, 1890 from Tunisia not only in their paler colour but also appears slightly shiny in contrast to the matt surface of the head of C. oasium oasium, especially in major workers. We have examined specimens similar to the C. oasium oasium morphotype from Fars province in Iran, but their conspecificity with true C. oasium is also uncertain.

Description

References