Camponotus sericeus (Fabricius, 1798)

Fig. 8

Formica sericea Fabricius, 1798: 279 (w) Senegal. Afrotropic.

Diagnosis

Body dull, coarsely sculptured with sparse stiff setae; propodeum broadly dentate posteriorly; mesosoma in profile with a deep metanotal groove; gaster covered with dense, appressed, golden pubescence.

Material examined

This species was not collected during the present study.

Ecological and biological notes

This species often nests in soil under stones adjacent to Acacia trees in Arabian deserts.

Geographic range

This is a common and widespread African species, originally described from Senegal, but is widely distributed in the Arabian Peninsula including Oman, Kuwait, KSA, Yemen (Collingwood 1985; Collingwood & Agosti 1996; Sharaf et al. 2013), and UAE (Collingwood et al. 2011). Camponotus sericeus is also known from Israel (Ionescu-Hirsch 2009), Afghanistan (Radchenko 1997), and India (Dey & Coumar 2008). This species was previously recorded from Dhofar based on a single specimen identified by Collingwood (1985).