Formica nylanderi BONDROIT, 1920

Seifert, Bernhard, 2021, A taxonomic revision of the Palaearctic members of the Formica rufa group (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) - the famous mound-building red wood ants, Myrmecological News 31, pp. 133-179 : 164

Formica nylanderi BONDROIT, 1920

Formica nylanderi BONDROIT, 1920 [type investigation]

Investigated were one syntype gyne labelled “Grindelwald Suisse Chabanaud coll. de Gaulle ”, “ Type ”, “ Formica v. nylanderi Type Bondr.” and one syntype gyne labelled “Lautaret 15 VII ”, “ Type ”, “ Formica rufa v. Nylanderi Type Bondr.”; depository MSNB Bruxelles .

Phenotypic variation in Formica lugubris gynes can be classified into several morphs the data of which are given in Table 7 (see also SEIFERT 2018). In both type gynes of F. nylanderi , data of OccHL, GuHL, PnHL, and MetHL are clearly above the upper extremes known from Formica paralugubris and morph A3 of Alpine F.lugubris but they may belong to Formica helvetica sp.n. or morph A1 of Alpine F.lugubris . Running the types as wild-cards against a sample of 28 gynes of F. helvetica and 36 gynes of morph A1, and considering the five characters ML / CS, PeW / CS, nCH, nMes, and nPe, the gyne from Grindelwald is allocated to morph A1 with p = 0.9928 and the gyne from Col de Lautaret with p = 0.9976. As the specimen from Grindelwald achieved a higher posterior probability in a wild-card run when all 20 characters were considered, it is designated herewith as lectotype.