Lasius casevitzi, Seifert & Galkowski, 2016

Schär, Sämi, Menchetti, Mattia, Schifani, Enrico, Hinojosa, Joan Carles, Platania, Leonardo, Dapporto, Leonardo & Vila, Roger, 2020, Integrative biodiversity inventory of ants from a Sicilian archipelago reveals high diversity on young volcanic islands (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), Organisms Diversity & Evolution (New York, N. Y.) 20 (3), pp. 405-416 : 412

Lasius casevitzi

This taxon was so far thought to be endemic for Corsica and is here reported for the first time for the fauna of Italy. Lasius casevitzi was described based on morphometrics as one of three cryptic species formerly known as L. paralienus : L. bombycina , L. casevitzi and L. paralienus s. str. ( Seifert and Galkowski 2016). Combining the results of this study with those of a previous investigation ( Schär et al. 2018), we here found support for this hypothesis at least at the level of mitochondrial DNA-lineages: L. paralienus s.l. comprises three deep mitochondrial lineages separated from each other by relatively high levels of divergence, similar to the other presently recognized species within the European Lasius alienus species group ( Fig. 3 ). Those lineages correspond to the morphologically separable groups characterized by Seifert and Galkowski (2016). However, the mitochondrial lineage and phenotype (terminal segment of maxillary palps longer than 0.2*cephalic size, genae with on average> 2.8 projecting hairs, see ESM 1 for specimen images) named L. casevitzi is apparently not endemic to Corsica, but at least also occurs on Sicily and the Aeolian Islands ( Figs. 2 and 3 , Table 2).

Figures

Fig. 3 Haplotype network of mtDNA barcode haplotypes found within the European members of the Lasius alienus species group sensu Seifert and Galkowski (2016). Note the placement of the Sicilian members of the group within the taxon L. casevitzi. Sequences other than those of L. casevitzi are from Schär et al. (2018).

Fig. 2 Maximum likelihood tree of 143 DNA barcodes belonging to 44 ant taxa. The scale bar indicates the number of changes per site. The colours given at nodes show % node support from 1000 bootstrap replicates.