Myrmoxenus ravouxi (André 1896), Vu Myrmicinae

Lapeva-Gjonova, Albena, Csősz, Sándor & Mifsud, David, 2024, Further records of social parasitic ants in Europe and review of the Bulgarian species, Biodiversity Data Journal 12, pp. e 123575-e 123575 : e123575-

Myrmoxenus ravouxi (André 1896)

Materials

Type status: Other material. Occurrence: catalogNumber: BFUS-I-AG 001993 ; recordedBy: A. Lapeva-Gjonova; individualCount: 1; sex: worker; preparations: pinned; occurrenceID: C4786BB7-43EE-570B-8B59-4C266D1D33C1; Taxon: scientificName: Myrmoxenus ravouxi (André 1896) ; order: Hymenoptera ; family: Formicidae ; Location: country: Albania; county: Korce; locality: Ostrovicë Mt., Voskopoje ; minimumElevationInMeters: 1312; decimalLatitude: 40.644715; decimalLongitude: 20.60356; Event: eventDate: 07-07 - 2022; habitat: pine forest; Record Level: collectionID: BFUS; basisOfRecord: PreservedSpecimen

Notes

This is the first record for Albania and the first member of Myrmoxenus for this country. It is widespread in Europe (missing in northern parts) to eastern Turkey ( Schulz and Sanetra 2002). It is an active slave-maker, most often on Temnothorax unifasciatus (Latreille, 1798) ( Buschinger and Winter 1985, Schulz and Sanetra 2002), but depending on the local fauna, it can also be found in nests of T. affinis (Mayr, 1855) , T. albipennis (Curtis, 1854) , T. tuberum (Fabricius, 1775) and T. nadigi (Kutter, 1925) ( Czechowski and Czechowska 2000, Seifert 2018). The new finding of M. ravouxi is from a nest of T. unifasciatus in a pine forest in the Ostrovicë Mountain (southern Albania).