Camponotus sericeus ( Fabricius, 1798 )

Subedi, I. P., Budha, P. B., Bharti, H., Alonso, L. & Yamane, S., 2021, First Record Of The Ant Subgenus Orthonotomyrmex Of The Genus Camponotus From Nepal (Hymenoptera, Formicidae), Zoodiversity 55 (4), pp. 279-284 : 281

Camponotus sericeus ( Fabricius, 1798) (fig. 3)

Materials examined. Nepal: Sarlahi,

Sagarnath [26.99428 N 85.67252 E], 115 m, Eucalyptus

camaldulensis plantation, 21.10.2020, 2 ♀ workers

(B Shrestha & T Sherpa); Tanahun, Ratanpur

[28.08777 N 84.39275 E], 859 m, Champ ( Magnolia

champaca) plantation, 29.11.2020, 1 ♀ worker

(PB Budha & P Shrestha).

D i s t r i b u t i o n. Nepal (new record),

India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Thailand,

Myanmar, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia,

Oman, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Algeria,

Mauritania, Mali, Guinea, Ivory coast,

Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Nigeria, Chad,

Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Congo, Zaire,

Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Fig. 3. Camponotus sericeus .

Botswana, Namibia, South Africa.

T a x o n o m i c n o t e s. The worker has a robust body, coarse sculpture on the head and mesosoma; the gaster is covered by thick, apprised, golden mossy pubescence, so that cuticular sculpture is not visible without removing hair. We identified our materials as C. sericeus based on the key in Ionescu-Hirsch (2009) and taxon discussion in Wachkoo & Akbar (2016). This species closely resembles C. opaciventris but can be distinguished from the latter by the gaster having a dense layer of pubescence ( Wachkoo & Akbar, 2016).