A taxonomic revision of the Palaearctic members of the Formica rufa group (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) - the famous mound-building red wood ants
Author
Seifert, Bernhard
text
Myrmecological News
2021
2021-04-28
31
133
179
http://zoobank.org/0e55c0d7-531a-48d7-a078-148b96bd461d
journal article
10.25849/myrmecol.news_031:133
b9f36fb1-1c9d-4af8-96ca-d57973b94862
1997-3500
5582216
0E55C0D7-531A-48D7-A078-148B96BD461D
Formica lugubris
ZETTERSTEDT, 1838
Formica lugubris
ZETTERSTEDT, 1838
[diagnosis of YAR- ROW (1955)]
The taxon was described from a male from Ofotford (
Norway
,
68.43° N
,
17.03° E
).
ZETTERSTEDT (1838)
’s description matches all three species expected to occur at the Ofotford:
F. lugubris
,
Formica aquilonia
,
and
Formica truncorum
.
YARROW (1955)
, who was the first after 120 years to revive
F. lugubris
from synonymy and to give it a status of a good species, did not explain on which basis he identified J.W. Zetterstedt’s male. All later authors (including me) followed
YARROW (1955)
’s diagnosis based on workers and gynes and kept silent regarding the male problem. J.W. Zetterstedt’s
type
male is, according to
YARROW (1955)
, stored in
ZMLU
Lund. If still present there, its identity can only be determined after a thorough, broad-based study on male characters at least in the Fennoscandian population of
F. lugubris
,
F. aquilonia
and
F. truncorum
– at least it remains to be investigated if the differential characters proposed in the keys of
KUTTER (1977)
and
CZECHOWSKI & al. (2012)
for the Central European population do apply to the boreal populations of these species.