Preface
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Chapter 1 - Introduction | The Ants of Africa Preface |
Second Edition
This second version of the text rises from my plan to update it as further source publications become available. Presently the main gaps lie in the difficulty of access to work published from Universities in francophone Africa, but the amount of information embodied in this version justifies making it available as it stands. With the generous gift from Professor Xavier Espadaler Gelabert, from Barcelona University, of the extensive report by Francis Bernard (1952), I have been able now (mid-1999) to move forward to this second version. In addition to illustrations from Bernard's work, I have replaced the ".jpg" format species drawings by ".gif" versions, thus, giving clearer white areas. The "Frontispiece" and "Many Faces...." sections were added after the original web posting and the analyses in "Biodiversity and Niches" are updated. New also are the separate chapter sections on Guinea and the ecological findings by Bernard & Lamotte.
Third edition - 2001
With the receipt of numerous specimens from the Doyle McKey team (see below), I have been able to add a considerable amount of information and scanned images of the species. The specimens include several species previously recorded only from the Congo Basin and, so, I have decided to expand the overall list by adding records of species known from that area.
Note From the 2001 edition, the reader will find a number of "missing" illustrations - these are not lost relative to the earlier editions but indicate images in published works not available for copyright purposes. This availability, I hope, will be improved before too long. I am also continuing the process of gathering original publications from nearly a century ago and so adding to the text and images.
Fourth edition - 2002
The catalogue now includes species known from the Congo Basin, including information from the writings of F. Santschi. Other fresh material is from a paper by Cedric Collingwood and a very interesting set of specimens of Driver Ants sent to me by Tatyana Humle, of the University of Stirling, who is studying chimpanzee behaviour, especially the use of tools, such as for "ant-dipping".
Fifth edition - 2003
For each species a link has been provided to the appropriate page in the Hymenoptera Name Server. Continuing the policy of ongoing development the addition of historical and bionomic material continues. The spreadsheet catalogue (Microsoft Excel 2000 format) now has links between all species and the appropriate page in the main catalogue.
Illustrations
Sixth Edition
More by accident than design but made possible through the efforts led
by Donat Agosti to get all the source publications on-line, I have
embarked on an expansion to bring as much as possible of, at least, the
taxonomic knowledge of ants from all of sub-Saharan Africa into this sixth
edition. The "publication" will be progressive due to the vast
amount of available information but I will place more and more on the site
as time goes by. I began to translate original texts from French, Spanish
or even Italian but I have no knowledge of German. Because that exercise
will be very demanding on time, I have decided to create "file cards",
e.g. 
,
each of which contain edited versions from scans of the original texts and
to link these from the summary descriptions. I have also created edited
versions of illustrations from original papers, so that nearly all are in
a uniform style.
Seventh Edition - 2005
The extensive work to collate information on all the described species from sub-Saharan Africa (inclusive of Sudan and Ethiopia) has been largely completed.
I have started to add cards summarising the distribution, as known from
published sources, plus new material incorporated on this website. Thus,
for each species, there will be a "distribution card" -
.
In due course, my intention is to add similar cards for, at least,
summaries, of biological information, again using "file cards",
e.g. 
.
Eigth Edition June 2005
The near completion of the ant literature collection available from the
Hymenoptera Name Server means that very little remians unaccessed of the
original descriptions and distribution records.
The historical reference list, for instance, now has 340 entries of which
only 32 remain unaccessed.
Further, it now has become possible to incorporate illustrations and other material from the numerous taxonomic papers written by Barry Bolton. For that kind permission was given by Prof. Quentin D. Wheeler, Keeper and Head of Entomology, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD U.K.
Thus, there are now almost 3600 description "cards" covering all but 20 of 1819 species. For 721 species there are no known illustrations and for 34 species original illustrations remain unaccessed. Illustrations are on the website for 1064 species.
Ninth Edition - November 2007
This is a wholesale revision of the basic structure of the website. The central feature is that each species has its own webpage. The former comparative format with related species on a shared page has been changed but not lost as an attempt has been made to create useable keys for all subfamilies and genera with more than a small number of members. A core element of each key is the incorporation of thumbnail images. Each of the species pages is linked from the related key.
For all but two of the now recognised 1901 species, the original or translated descriptions are given either in the main text or on linked "TAXONOMY" cards; of which there are around 5000, covering the subspecies and synonyms as well as the type species. In constructing the keys, many of the original descriptions have had to be translated from non-English sources, most commonly French but also German and Italian, with a few from Latin.
The main caution that needs to be understood by the user is that the author has not sought out or accessed type material, other than where photographs of types have been made available on the internet. Thus, there may be instances where the identification of fresh specimens sent to the author ultimately turns out to be wrong. For the present the identifications should be viewed as "best guess" determinations, although in each case the original descriptions of the species and its parent species where the status has been changed from subspecies, variety or stirps, etc. have been read.
Ultimately, the hope is for a full printed or CD edition but use of a Web version, despite some limitations in the presentation of the many illustrations, should offer an accessible text for those in remoter global areas and with limited funding. It will also allow very rapid updating as further information, taxonomic revisions and the like come to hand.
The use of an electronic format gives certain advantages in the use of the text - by permitting cross-access through "clickable links", these have particular advantages in moving from the "Contents" page to individual sections, from sections to illustrations and so-on.
When using the "Keys to Species" the "clickable
links" enable rapid movement from couplet to couplet or on
to the individual taxon and, from either, a 
button gives easy return to the source couplet.
The "Taxonomic Name Indices", which can be accessed from the "Contents" page and from all sections of the narrative Chapters, represent my attempt to alphabetically list all the published names which relate to the presently definitive species. Each name has a "clickable link" to the definitive species - and thus provides a quick access from published names - be they subspecies, junior synonyms, outdated names, or whatever. The indices include many names which probably have not been used in the geographical context of West Africa. The supreme example of a multiplicity of names under a single species can be found with Camponotus maculatus which, bearing in mind the poor state of all Camponotine taxonomy, has some 10 subspecies, 31 junior synonyms and 11 other "unavailable names" etc. - it has been found throughout Africa, right across Asia and into Australasia. When genus revisions and synonymization relate to West African and Congo Basin species I have listed the "original" genus name, but have not done so for ants from elsewhere.
In addition to the indexing of published names, I have attempted also to list all "forms" - a term which I use for the ants listed in many bionomics and survey reports simply by the Genus name followed by "species X", where X is a code letter or number or combinations of letter and number(s). In a number of cases the form is linked to a subsequently determined definitive species. Sadly, the taxonomists have not always indicated the "form" used by the original collector.
Acknowledgements - Although much of the task has been self-funded, with the support of my family and friends, the costs of information resourcing were met by a grant from The Royal Entomological Society, and Messrs Intercept furnished me with several of the works by Barry Bolton at a discount. Members of the Life Sciences Department at the University of Nottingham, especially Francis Gilbert, have been very helpful and encouraging, and, of course, the University initially provided the necessary space and access to its Web site for the early versions.
In mid-2001, I was asked if I would identify specimens collected by the Cameroon Wolbachia project led by Professor Doyle McKey of Montpellier University. Not only did that refreshed my hands-on association with the ants but it also enabled me to add a number of "scanned" images of ants to this site. These images, I hope, will make the pages even more vivid and illustrative of the variety of shapes, sizes and colours of ants. My thanks to Doyle and his colleagues.
Professor Alain Dejean also has very generously sent me copies of all the many studies he and his colleagues have undertaken in Cameroun.
I am grateful also to Dr. Donat Agosti for the welcome extended to this work and for its inclusion in the listing on the American Museum of Natural History web site for Social Insects. In March 2002, the portal has been opened to the new Antbase.org site.
From May 2002, this site is included on Natural Selection, which is a gateway to quality evaluated Internet resources in the natural world, coordinated by The Natural History Museum, London. Natural Selection is part of BIOME, an integrated collection of Internet gateways covering the health and life sciences.
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©1998-9, 2001, 2002,
2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 - Brian Taylor CBiol FIBiol FRES 11, Grazingfield, Wilford, Nottingham, NG11 7FN, U.K. Visiting Academic in the Department of Life Science, University of Nottingham Published in association with Dr. Francis S. Gilbert |
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