Aphaenogaster fulva Roger, 1863

Shattuck, Steve & Cover, Stefan, 2016, Taxonomy of some little-understood North American ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), Zootaxa 4175 (1), pp. 10-22 : 13

Aphaenogaster fulva Roger, 1863

Aphaenogaster fulva Roger, 1863: 190 . Syntype workers, “ North America ” (Berlin Museum für Naturkunde der Humboldt-Universität) [https://www.antweb.org/specimen/ FOCOL 1231 ].

Myrmica (Monomorium) aquia Buckley, 1867: 341 . Neotype worker (here designated) from Concord, Hapgood Wright Town Forest at junction of Route 2 and Route 126 [42°26′N 71°20′W], Middlesex County, Massachusetts, 4 July 1998 (S.P. Cover, SPC #5024 ) (Museum of Comparative Zoology) [http:// mczbase.mcz.harvard.edu/guid/ MCZ: Ent:552000; http://www.antwiki.org/wiki/ Aphaenogaster _ aquia ]. New synonym.

Creighton (1950) provides an exhaustive history of the name A. aquia . Buckley (1867) did not designate types, leaving us with little more than speculation as to what his name might represent. From the meager description, A. aquia could be any Aphaenogaster native to the northeast, excepting perhaps A. tennesseensis or A. treatae . Mayr (1886) believed it to be a synonym of A. fulva while Emery (1895) treated it as a subspecies of A. fulva . Creighton (1950) felt that what Emery called A. aquia was an intergrade between A. picea and A. rudis , both of which were considered to be subspecies of A. fulva at that time, with A. picea being the higher elevation form occurring in the Appalachian Highlands and A. rudis a lower elevation form found in the piedmont areas at the base of the Highlands. He concluded that “We do not know what Buckley's aquia was. Emery's aquia appears to have been an intergrade which should never have been named. I propose, therefore, to place aquia in the list of unrecognizable forms.” Subsequent authors followed Creighton’s lead and have left the name aquia alone for over 50 years.

To permanently resolve the status of Buckley’s aquia we here designate a neotype. This specimen is conspecific with the currently accepted concept of A. fulva , and thus Myrmica (Monomorium) aquia Buckley becomes a junior synonym of A. fulva Roger.