Myrmoxenus algerianus ( Cagniant, 1968 )

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 algerianus ( Cagniant, 1968)

Materials

Type status: Other material. Occurrence: catalogNumber: BFUS-I-AG 001991 ; recordedBy: A. Lapeva-Gjonova; individualCount: 1; sex: queen; preparations: pinned; occurrenceID: 3239BA51-C917-5DBC-8967-675F377E919A; Taxon: scientificName: Myrmoxenus algerianus ( Cagniant, 1968) ; order: Hymenoptera ; family: Formicidae ; taxonRank: species; Location: island: Sicily; country: Italy; locality: Cassaro ; minimumElevationInMeters: 317; decimalLatitude: 37.10299; decimalLongitude: 14.96467; Event: samplingProtocol: leaf-litter sifting; eventDate: 06-04 - 2015; habitat: karst gorge; Record Level: collectionID: BFUS; basisOfRecord: PreservedSpecimen

Notes

This is the first record for Europe. Myrmoxenus algerianus is known from the Atlas and Rif mountains in Algeria (type locality) and Morocco ( Cagniant 1968). Buschinger et al. (1990) found it in both deciduous and coniferous (cedar) forests at 400-2100 m a. s. l. It is an active enslaver, most often on Temnothorax spinosus (Forel, 1909) , but also on T. curtulus (Santschi, 1929) , T. gentilis (Santschi, 1923) and T. monjauzei ( Cagniant, 1968) ( Buschinger 1989) . Up to now, M. ravouxi (André 1896) has been the only known Myrmoxenus species from Sicily ( Schifani et al. 2021 a, Schifani 2022). Myrmoxenus algerianus differs from congeners in the shape of the ventral subpetiolar process (almost rectangular rather than almost triangular in M. kraussei ), the pilosity of the thorax (shorter in M. algerianus than in M. kraussei ) and the position and length of the propodeal spines compared to M. ravouxi ( Cagniant and Espadaler 1997) (Fig. 3 a ). The collected specimen in Sicily was found in a karst gorge by leaf-litter sifting (Fig. 3 b ). Although we have no information on the host from the new locality, none of the known host species from Morocco and Algeria occurs in Sicily. The following Temnothorax species were identified from the new locality: T. recedens (Nylander, 1853) , T. poldii Alicata, Schifani & Prebus, 2022 and T. lichtensteini (Bondroit, 1918) .

Figures

Figure 3 a. queen, scale: 1 mm;

Figure 3 b. collecting site in Sicily; photo: R. Kostova.