Plagiolepis (Plagiolepis) pygmaea (Latreille)
  Type location France
(Formica pygmaea, Latreille, 1798: 45, worker & queen;
Schenck, 1852: 69, male) - no images on Antweb (December 2014)
subspecies
bulawayensis (Plagiolepis
pygmaea Latreille var. bulawayensis
n. v., Arnold, 1922: 601, worker & queen) from Zimbabwe,
Bulawayo - see below
mima (Plagiolepis
pygmaea Latreille var. mima
n. v., Arnold, 1922: 602, worker) from Zimbabwe, Hillside,
Bulawayo, G Arnold
minu (Plagiolepis
pygmaea Latreille var. Minu
n. v., Forel, 1911d: 350, worker) from Greece, Aivaly - see
below
worker and queen only known (see Bolton,
1995)  .
|
 Latreille (1802c: 183) reiterated his description, this
is at  . Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau (1835: 195)
gave a description, this is at  . Arnold (1922: 600 ff), citing Latreille's
(1798) description, gave a full description; that plus his descriptions
of bulawayensis and mima is at  . Santschi (1920g) made a study of pygmaea
and its close relatives; the pygmaea description is at  . Emery (1921d) made a study of the pygmaea
group of Mediterranean species; this is at -  . Presumably, it post-dated Arnold's (1922) work on Plagiolepis
species. Emery regarded pygmaea as the species from around the
Mediterranean and a group from South Africa. It seems possible that
more precise study would lead to both bulawayensis and mima
being raised to full species status.
Karavaiev (1931a: 309ff) considered pygmaea
specimens from Palermo, Sicily, and what now is the species taurica
(Plagiolepis maura var taurica, Santschi, 1920g: 171,
worker; raised to species Radchenko, 1989b: 155) from Ukraine.
Karavaiev's text is at  .
Specimens from the type collections of bulawayensis
and mima
are shown at the bottom of this page. Whereas bulawayensis appears close to the
dark form from the Mediterranean area, minu clearly is either a separate
species or a form of one of the other African species.
|
  
|
  |
 The photomontage of the
type worker of minu is
collated from http://www.antweb.org/specimen.do?name=casent0909856
|
Oxford University Museum
specimens
Plagiolepis (Plagiolepis) pygmaea
B Taylor det.
|
Egypt
M Sharaf
|
6.iii.2003
Zaranik
30°39' N
34°26' E
|
North Sinai
|
1
|
 |
|
 The
photomontage is of a specimen from Egypt, Abumadi Zaranik,
North Sinai, 34°26' E, 30°39' N, collected by Mostafa Sharaf, 6.iii.2003
|
 The
photomontage is of a specimen from Iran, Azadi Park, Shiraz,
collected by Roshanak Torabi (23).
|
 The
photomontage is of specimens from Portugal, collected on
8.iv.2008 in heavily degraded scrubland, dominated by Acacia
dealbata, Cistus salvifolius and Pistacia lenticularis,
foraging on the Acacia. The site is south of Lisbon,
approximately 5km inland, at W 9°11'30", N 38°,38',8", collector Markus
Eichhorn and students.
|
 The
photomontage is of a worker from Mallorca, the original can be seen
on the WWW.hormigas.org
website, and shows the dark colour of the southern European pygmaea.
|
 The
photomontage of a syntype worker of bulawayensis is
collated from http://www.antweb.org/specimen.do?name=casent0903145
|
|
