Carebara vidua F Smith

queen - Type location South Africa (Carebara vidua, F Smith, 1858b: 179, male; Mayr, 1866b: 904, queen; Forel, 1901g: 392, worker) Port Natal - male see below
junior synonyms
colossus (Carebara Colossus n. sp., Gerstäcker, 1859: 263, queen; also Gerstäcker, 1862: 512, synonymy Mayr, 1866b: 904) from Mozambique - see https://www.antweb.org/specimenImages.do?code=focol1917
dux (Carebara dux, F. Smith, 1858b: 179, queen) from South Africa, Port Natal - see below
abdominalis (Carevara vidua Sm., var. abdominalis n. var., Santschi, 1912d: 285, queen) from Kenya, British East Africa, by Alluaud - see https://www.antweb.org/specimenImages.do?code=casent0101463
subspecies fur (Carevara vidua Sm. v. fur n. var., Santschi, 1928f: 198, queen) from Congo, Lambarene, Dr Schouteden - see http://www.antweb.org/specimenImages.do?code=casent0913488
all forms described (see Bolton, 1995) .

F Smith's (1858b) description is at . Mayr's (1866b) description of the queen and male is at . Gerstäcker's (1859) description of the colossus queen is at . Forel's (1901g) full description is at . Santschi's (1912d) description of the abdominalis queen is at . Santschi's (1928f) description of fur is at .

Arnold (1916: 249) gave an illustrated translation and notes, these are is at , queen - and, male - .

Forel (1909b) recorded dux from Katanga by Lemaire.

Emery (1922f, Plate 4) gave comparative illustrations of the three forms.

The photomontage is of the holotype male collated from http://www.antweb.org/specimen.do?name=casent0902401

The photomontage is of the type queen of dux collated from http://www.antweb.org/specimen.do?name=casent0902402

The photomontage is of a likely worker from South Africa (P G Hawkes) collated from http://www.antweb.org/specimen.do?name=casent0260120

At the end of December, 2008, I received an email from Ted MacRae - "Hi Brian, I ran across another couple of photos from South Africa - the attached are of a mating cluster at Borakalalo National Park in North West Province. Photos taken 25.xi.1999. Any help with ID would be greatly appreciated. Best regards, Ted". These appear to be a good match for the descriptions (Arnold translation, 1916, links above) and Emery's Plate 4. See his website at http://beetlesinthebush.wordpress.com/

In January, 2009, I received an email from Joan Young of http://saphotographs.blogspot.com/ with this photograph of queens taken in Pretoria, South Africa. Joan described them as "about an inch long", i.e. ca 24 mm. They show the variation in gaster colour mentioned by Arnold (see "card 8" linked above).