Bulletin de l’Institut Scientifique, Rabat, section Sciences de la Vie, 2012, n° 34 (2), p. 121-123 SHORT NOTE First record of the ant subfamily Cerapachyinae Forel, 1893 (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from Morocco Rhian GUILLEM 1 , Keith BENSUSAN 2 & Ahmed TAHERI 3 1. University of Sheffield, Department of Animal & Plant Sciences, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK. e-mail: ants@gonhs.org 2. Gibraltar Ornithological & Natural History Society, PO Box 843, Gibraltar 3. Université Abdelmalek Essaâdi, Faculté des Sciences, Département de Biologie Laboratoire "Diversité et Conservation des Systèmes Biologiques", B.P.2121 Tétouan, Morocco. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Résumé. Des prospections entomologiques au Maroc ont permis la découverte pour la première fois d’une fourmi appartenant à la sous famille Cerapachyinae Forel, 1893, élevant ainsi à 10, le nombre de sous familles de fourmis connues au Maroc. Le spécimen a été localisé près de Goulmima, province d’Errachidia. Il appartient au genre Cerapachys Smith, 1857, du groupe longitarsus. Toutefois, la détermination spécifique n’a pu être réalisée avec certitude à cause d’une part des problèmes taxonomiques, et d’autre part, du manque du matériel biologique. Mots clés : Formicidae, Cerapachyinae, Cerapachys, groupe longitarsus, Maroc. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION The Kingdom of Morocco has a rich ant fauna. A recent catalogue of the ants of Morocco recorded 214 species from the country (Cagniant 2006), but additions to its myrmecofauna are ongoing and have subsequently provided seven new species to that catalogue (Delabie & Jacques 2007, Gómez et al. 2009, Cagniant 2009, Taheri et al. 2010, Taheri & Reyes López 2011). Nine subfamilies of ant are currently known from Morocco: Dolichoderinae Forel, 1878 (with 9 species), Formicinae Latreille, 1809 (57 spp.), Aenictinae Emery, 1901 (1 sp.), Dorylinae Leach, 1815 (2 spp.), Leptanillinae Emery, 1910 (3 spp.), Amblyoponinae Forel, 1893 (3 spp.), Ponerinae Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau, 1835 (5 spp.), Proceratiinae Emery, 1895 (1 sp.) and Myrmicinae Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau, 1835 (140 spp.). In addition, a species originally described as Aenictus maroccanus Santschi, 1926 based on a single specimen in fact belongs to the genus Neivamyrmex Borgmeier, 1940 in the subfamily Ecitoninae Forel, 1893 (Bolton 2012). However, this subfamily is only known from the New World and the record is therefore best interpreted as a mislabelling of a Neotropical specimen (Aktaç et al. 2004). The ant fauna of Iberia on the opposite side of the Strait of Gibraltar is richer with almost 300 species (Gómez et al. 2012), but the Moroccan myrmecofauna is more diverse at the subfamily level (seven are known from Iberia) and includes some predominantly palaeotropical elements such as the Aenictinae and the Dorylinae that are absent from Iberia. With this note, we record the presence of a Cerapachys Smith, 1857 species in Morocco, adding a tenth subfamily to its fauna: Cerapachyinae Forel, 1893. The genus Cerapachys is distributed throughout the tropics and subtropics but is most common in the Old World, particularly the Indo-Australian region (Brown 1975). The most recent comprehensive work on the genus was by Brown (1975) and 152 species are currently recognised (Bolton 2012). Of these, four species have been identified from the Middle East, where additional species are known to occur (Collingwood & Agosti 1996, Collingwood et al. 2011), whilst three are cited from North Africa, in Egypt (Taylor & Sharaf 2012) and Tunisia (Santschi 1910). MATERIALS AND METHODS The Moroccan record is based on a single worker captured ca. 13 km east of Goulmima, Errachidia Province, 31°44.568'N, 4°51.945'W, 1100 m elevation, Leg. R. Guillem 03.v.2012. The specimen is illustrated in Figure 1. The habitat was a dry oued surrounded by stony, desert steppe of Hammada scoparia (Pomel) Iljin (Amaranthaceae) with scattered Ziziphus lotus (L.) Lam., Asteraceae and Fabaceae shrubs and Anabasis aretioides Moq. & Coss. ex Bunge (Amaranthaceae). A photograph of the site is included (Fig. 2). The specimen was captured whilst sampling at night with a LED Lenser H14R headlamp (220 lumens). It was found walking quickly along the ground. Further searches failed to produce more specimens. Also present at the site and active at night was Monomorium santschii (Forel, 1905), an infrequently encountered species that is known to be nocturnal. The specimen has been deposited in the private collection of Rhian Guillem. The specimen has been ascribed to the longitarsus- group of Cerapachys species. The species is very closely allied to Cerapachys longitarsus (Mayr, 1879), as is apparent when taken through the keys in Brown (1975) and compared to images of specimens belonging to that species, including one from Yemen (www.antweb.org). However, some problems arise in the identification of species of the longitarsus-group and these are discussed below.