Pheidole fulvobasalis Santschi - new status

Type location Benin (Pheidole excellens Mayr v. fulvobasalis nov. var., Santschi, 1921c: 116, major & minor) from Benin, Agouagou, Roubaud
all but male described (see Bolton, 1995) .

Santschi's (1921c) description of the fulvobasalis major is at .

The photomontage of the fulvobasalis type major worker is collated from http://www.antweb.org/specimen.do?name=casent0913306. Readily separable from Pheidole excellens in that this has a wide postpetiole with narrow lateral processes, which are not present in excellens. It is similar to but larger than Pheidole weissi.

The photomontage of a fulvobasalis minor worker is collated from http://www.antweb.org/specimen.do?name=casent0913307. Note that it comes from totally different location to the above major.

Nigeria specimens (Pheidole species F995, Taylor 1980a: 23)
Major - 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.

Both the major and minor, allowing for the small scale of my drawings, are close matches to the fulvobasalis specimens shown above, although smaller.

The photomontage of the "rohani" type major worker is collated from http://www.antweb.org/specimen.do?name=casent0913423. Very similar to the major of Pheidole fulvobasalis and unlikely to be the true major of Pheidole rohani.