Pyramica (Serrastruma) serrula (Santschi)

Type location Congo (Strumigenys serrula, Santschi, 1910c: 390, worker; raised to species, Santschi, 1911c: 361) collected at Brazzaville, by A. Weiss; junior synonym uelensis (Santschi, 1923: 289, illustrated, worker) from Zaïre, collected at Haut Uélé, by L. Burgeon, xi.1919; (see Bolton, 1995) .

Santschi's (1910c & 1911c) descriptions are at . Santschi's (1923) description of uelensis is at . Bolton's modern description (1983) is at .

WORKER (drawn specimen) - TL 1.96 mm, HL 0.45, HW 0.36, SL 0.26, PW 0.25 (in my guide as Serrastruma species Bolton collected)
Entire body, except the gaster and central area of lateral mesonotum, reticulopunctate, coarsest on the head. Erect hairs few, most being on the gaster, relatively long, narrow and clavate. Appressed narrow clavate hairs on the dorsal head and alitrunk. Long sinuous hairs at the humeral angles and on the head above the eyes. Colour dull yellow to yellowish-brown.
TL 1.9-2.3; larger and less pilose than lujae (Bolton, 1983: 349, illustrated).

The Nigeria specimen drawn was collected by me at CRIN in 1975 but the details were mislaid. Bolton collected it at Gambari from a tree stump and from under bark of a dead log, although he did not list his findings in the 1983 review.

From Ghana listed by Bolton (1983) as known from CRIG (himself) and Mampong (P.M. Room). the latter is in Room (1971) from leaf litter under cocoa at the Mampong Cemetery farm. A single worker was collected by pkd from Amelonado cocoa canopy at CRIG by Bigger (1981a). Since described as widespread (823 workers from 16 sites) in their leaf litter samples in the semi-deciduous forest zone by Belshaw & Bolton (1994b).

Cameroun records given by Bolton (1983), at Nko'emvon (D.A. Jackson) and near Yaoundé (G. Terron). Its feeding habits, on entomobryomorph collembolans, were described by Déjean (1980), also from Cameroun.

Other West African records are Ivory Coast, at Bingerville and Tai Forest (V. Mahnert & J.-L. Perret), Lamto (J. Lévieux), Anguédédou Forest and Banco Forest (W.L. Brown), and Divo (L. Brader). Also from Chad, at Haut Mbomu (N.A. Weber).

Widespread elsewhere in Central Africa.

The photomontage is of specimens collected in Cameroun - south-western tropical coastal forest area between Edéa and Campo (McKey Wolbachia project) - Cameroon 113 from location KIEN, 25 March 2001; from on Leonardoxa africana africana. Note, although these have the very dense punctate sculpturation of all of the body, other than the shiny gaster, the sinuous hairs on the face and alitrunk are very fine and near invisible. Other images can be seen in the folder at -