O.t.p. Noire, glabre, luisante. Extrémités des cuisses et des jambes, tarses, pâles. Mâle. Tête et corcelet d'un noir clair. Base des antennes, pattes, pâles. Aîles obscures. Femelle . Noire, veloutée. Jambes et tarses testacés. Nervures jaunâtres à la base des aîles antérieures.
B. Seifert (2012) wijst er in een herziening van het genus Tapinoma (Europa) op dat er geen typemateriaal van Latreille meer te vinden is en aangezien zijn beschrijving ook geen diagnostische waarde heeft, stelt hij voor Tapinoma erraticum een neotype voor. Dit neotype draagt het label "Neotype Tapinoma erraticum (Latreille, 1798), design. B. Seifert 2010" en "FRA: 45.0517°N, 1.5372°E, Nepouls-Faugère, 330 m, along road, under stone, leg. Galkowski 2008.07.02" en bevindt zich in het Senckenberg Museum für Naturkunde Görlitz. De beschrijving van dit neotype is als volgt:
It has the following data: CS 836 μm, CL / CW 1.100, SL / CS 1.024, EL / CS 0.259, dAN / CS 0.279, ExCly / CS 8.87%, ExOcc / CS 1.42%, MGr / CS 3.58%, MW / CS 0.646 and ML / CS 1.347.
Worker: Head, mesosoma and gaster covered by a rath-er dense pubescence. With maximum head length and width in visual plane, posterior margin of head in medium-sized and large specimens slightly excavated. Anteromedian clypeal excision usually at least as deep a wide. Eye contours deviating from ideally elliptic form, showing linear sections on median margin. Anterior margin of clypeus with a few standing setae, the two longest based near to the anterolateral margin of clypeal excision. Remaining surface of head capsule and dorsal mesosoma without standing setae, such are present on mandibles, coxae and ventral surface of gaster. Head, mesosoma and gaster dark blackish brown. Antennae, femora and tibiae dark brown. Tarsi and distal end of tibiae light yellowish brown.
Male (see fig. 3 in SEIFERT 1984 for genital in ventral view): excision of the subgenital plate much shallower than in T. subboreale sp.n. The caudal tips of subgenital plate rounded, much shorter and much less distant than in T. subboreale sp.n. Stipal tips, in contrast, widely separate and caudally strongly surpassing the tips of subgenital plate which is completely invisible in dorsal aspect.
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