Formica picea Leach 1825

Seifert, Bernhard, 2019, A taxonomic revision of the members of the Camponotus lateralis species group (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from Europe, Asia Minor and Caucasia, Soil Organisms 91 (1), pp. 7-32 : 25

Formica picea Leach 1825

This taxon has been described from Nice in southern France. The full text of the original description is ‘Capite, antennis, thorace, abdomine pedibusque piceis, glaberimis, nitentibus; geniculis tarsisque ferrugineis. Corporis longitudo. M 5 mm, g 10 mm, w 5 mm.’ Figures were not given and it seems that no later revising taxonomist has seen original material of Leach and that types do not exist. Hence, it appears difficult to understand how revisers could reasonably allocate such a crude description to a certain species. There are several possible candidates for entirely blackish ants of this size from the environs of Nice with a glabrous shining surface, and apparently having no spines or dents on mesosoma (if so, Leach should have mentioned it as he did in other species descriptions). A Formica species, namely F. gagates Latreille or F. fusca Linnaeus , may be excluded because males of this subgenus do not have a clearly smaller body length than gynes. The jet black Lasius (Dendrolasius) fuliginosus can be excluded too because virgin gynes do not reach 10 mm. Blackish species related to Lasius niger might roughly match the size distribution over the three castes, but ferruginous ‘knees’ (i.e., the femoratibial joint) contrasting the blackish color of femora and tibiae do not occur here as it is with glabrous, shining and jet black surfaces. It is also not very likely that Formica picea Leach could refer to one of the two species of Proformica occurring in the vicinity of Nice ( Galkowski et al. 2017) as these do not seem to have big differences in total body length between males and gynes and are more medium to dark brown in overall coloration and not glabrous. Hence, this argumentation finally points to a black species of the Camponotus lateralis group – at least there is no character in Leach’s description that is contradictory to this view. As the geographic distribution of the other blackish species of the group, namely C. atricolor , C. candiotes and C. heidrunvogtae n.sp., is much more eastern, there is sufficient reason to maintain the name allocation as it was done by other myrmecologists in the past. To settle this point, I designate herewith a neotype of C. piceus in a sample of two workers from near Nice, stored in SMN Görlitz and labeled ‘FRA: 43.799°N, 7.488°N, 90 m / Menton – 2.8 km N / leg. C. Galkowski 2011.08.10 ’ and ‘ Neotype (top) / Camponotus piceus (Leach 1825) / des. B. Seifert 2018 ’. The two workers of the neotype sample are allocated to C. piceus with a mean posterior probability of p = 0.9998 if run as wild-card in a 5-class LDA considering the five black species of the group given in Tab. 3 .