Pheidole nimba Bernard
Type location Guinea
(Bernard, 1952: 224, illustrated, minor) 4 minors from the Nion crest,
1300 m, Mt. Nimba - see below;
worker only described (Bolton, 1995, is wrong) .
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Bernard's
(1952) description is at . This translated is -
MINOR - TL 3.5-3.6, HL ca 1.45, HW ca 1.2
Entirely black, head matt, covered with large regular reticulation.
Slender yellowish hairs, equal or longer in length to femur of hindleg.
Head rounded, slightly narrowed posteriorly, border of vertex short and
regularly concave. Pronotum flat or slightly concave dorsally; wide
suture between mesonotum and propodeum, with tiny longitudinal
crenellae; propodeum swollen posteriorly, spines incurved, about
two-thirds of propodeum length. Petiole with rounded low node, twice as
long as the peduncle (after Bernard, 1952).
Bernard (1952) felt this was related to Pheidole dea from
Zaïre and especially Pheidole
vanderveldi from Zaïre (Katanga) and Natal. The latter is
larger (TL 4.2) and the head vertex border is angular, other details
such as the funiculus segments, shape of pronotum, propodeum and
shorter spines, also differ. He speculated that the undiscovered
soldier of nimba would be not much larger than the minor (as
was known for vanderveldi). I feel this is an incorrect
assumption.
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