Nylanderia jaegerskioeldi ( Mayr, 1904 )

Sharaf, Mostafa R., Wetterer, James K., Mohamed, AbdulAziz M. A., Georgiadis, Christos, Nasser, Mohamed G. & Aldawood, Abdulrahman S., 2024, Filling gaps in global myrmecology: ants of the Kingdom of Bahrain (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), Journal of Natural History 58 (41 - 44), pp. 1705-1786 : 1728-1732

Nylanderia jaegerskioeldi ( Mayr, 1904)

( Figures 15 and 16 )

Prenolepis (Nylanderia) jaegerskioeldi Mayr, 1904, p. 8 (q, m.), Egypt. Palaearctic.

Diagnosis

Worker. Uniform brown in colour and easily distinguished by the occurrence of abundant scattered stiff setae distributed over the entire body.

Material examined. Thirteen sites: 1; 3; 4; 9; 12; 13; 15; 17; 24; 25; 27; 30; 31.

Geographic range. A successful invasive species that is widely distributed in most countries of the Arabian Peninsula including Oman, Yemen ( Collingwood and Agosti 1996), the KSA ( Collingwood 1985; Sharaf et al. 2023), and the UAE ( Collingwood et al. 1997, 2011). It was also reported from the Palaearctic and Afrotropical regions ( LaPolla et al. 2011).

Ecology and biology. In Oman, N. jaegerskioeldi was found in leaf litter in a wide range of habitats including mango and irrigated date palm plantations ( Sharaf et al. 2018b), and it is well established in the humid greenhouses of the Oman Botanic Gardens (near Muscat). The same observation was documented by Gómez (2017), who mentioned that the species prefers irrigated lawns with palm trees and public gardens which represent its typical habitat of the species.

Figures

Figure 15. Nylanderia jaegerskioeldi. Worker. (A) Body in profile. (B) Head in full-face view, ANTWEB1041928, AntWeb.org (Michele Esposito). (C) Distribution map.

Figure 16. Nylanderia jaegerskioeldi. Male. (A) Body in profile. (B) Head in full-face view. (C) Gaster showing genitalia, ANTWEB1041926, AntWeb.org (Michele Esposito).