Talk:Pachycondyla silvestrii nimba

From Barry Bolton (January 2013): I was looking at Bernard's "Ants of Mt Nimba" and noticed something rather odd. Bernard does not mention Mesoponera ambigua (Andre) as occurring in Guinea, but he has an abundance of other Mesoponera species which are all described as new. Now, I have fairly extensive experience of West African ponerines and I know that M. ambigua is very common everywhere. I could not imagine that it is absent from Guinea, and concluded that Bernard was probably just unaware of the name. So, I pulled all the ambigua that I have here and compared them with Bernard's various descriptions. I reckon that M. ambigua (Andre) is the senior synonym of four Bernard names: nimba, testacea, picea, and villiersi. The obvious givaway is the denticle at the midpoint of the anterior clypeal margin. I also reckon that Bernard's weberi = his novemdentata. These modifications bring the Guinea fauna into line with other West African countries. Of course, the types need to be checked to finalise the issue.