Mystrium camillae Emery, 1889

Yoshimura, Masashi & Fisher, Brian L., 2014, A revision of the ant genus Mystrium in the Malagasy region with description of six new species and remarks on Amblyopone and Stigmatomma (Hymenoptera, Formicidae, Amblyoponinae), ZooKeys 394, pp. 1-99: 32

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Mystrium camillae Emery, 1889


Mystrium camillae Emery, 1889  Figs 33D, 34D

Mystrium camillae  Emery, 1889. MYANMAR, Bhamo. Syntype: workers and queen [The lectotype is designated below].

Lectotype of Mystrium camillae 

[here designated]. Worker: CASENT0102123, MYANMAR, Bhamo, iv.1886, Fea leg. [MSNG: examined].


The lectotype for Mystrium camillae  is designated here. We confirm that five workers collected from vi.1885 to iv.1886 are part of the syntype series: two workers in MSNG [CASENT0102123, CASENT0102124]; one worker in MNHN [CASENT0101450]; and two workers in MHNG [CASENT0101809, CASENT0101784]. Although Emery (1889) described a queen in his original description, we could not find the syntype queen. According to the original description ( Emery 1889), the queen is dealate, and was not collected from the same colony as any of the syntype workers.

According to the revision of Mystrium  in the Indo-Australian region ( Bihn and Verhaagh 2007), Mystrium camillae  is widely distributed in the Indomalaya, and Australian regions: from Australia to Brunei, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and Singapore. We find that specimens currently determined as Mystrium camillae  display remarkable morphological variation, some of which appears not to be intra-specific but rather due to differences among species. For example, we found a small-sized queen with vestigial wings in Indonesian material (CASENT0009854), workers with longer setae on the anteromedial portion of the clypeus in specimens from New Guinea, a large queen with simple setae on the pronotal dorsum in specimens from China (CASENT0275389), and a strange yellow male from Australia (CASENT0172083).

We have found that clarifying species boundaries in the genus Mystrium  is much more complicated than would be expected from previous studies. The differences among some sibling species similar to Mystrium camillae  could be recognizable only in a particular sex, caste, or phenotype, as in the case of Mystrium camillae  and Mystrium barrybressleri  . A reexamination of the species boundaries of Mystrium camillae  based on a detailed comparative study using comprehensive colony samples from each local region will be necessary.