Formica lugubris Zetterstedt 1838

Schifani, Enrico, Csősz, SÁndor, Viviano, Roberto & Alicata, Antonio, 2021, Ant diversity on the largest Mediterranean islands: on the presence or absence of 28 species in Sicily (Hymenoptera, Formicidae), Natural History Sciences 8 (1), pp. 55-70 : 63

4. Formica lugubris Zetterstedt 1838

The natural distribution of F. lugubris (a member of the rufa group, the renowned “red wood ants”) in Italy is restricted to the Alps. In 1956, F. lugubris was introduced to the Etna by Pavan (1959). Sicily does not naturally host red wood ants, as the southernmost distribution of F. pratensis Retzius 1783 , the sole species not originally restricted to the Alps in Italy, is in the Central Apennines (Baroni Urbani, 1971). Such action, which today would immediately be seen as ecologically dangerous, was part of a broader state program aimed at the biological control of forest pests, which consisted of several introductions across Italy (Pavan, 1959; Baroni Urbani, 1971). At least a majority of the introduced ant colonies did not truly represent F. lugubris , but instead its cryptic species endemic to the Alps, F. paralugubris Seifert 1996 (Frizzi et al., 2018; 2020; Masoni et al., 2019). Such introductions were sometimes successful, and recent studies have begun to analyse their ecological consequences (Frizzi et al., 2018; 2020; Masoni et al., 2019). Anyway, Pavan himself and subsequent authors (Pavan, 1959; Baroni Urbani, 1971; Poldi et al., 1995) considered the establishment of a viable population on the Etna as probably failed. To the best of our knowledge, no targeted surveys were hitherto carried out to verify their assertions. However, considering that a population of red wood ants would be impossible to overlook during field surveys, and the extensive searching efforts spent on the Etna, we can safely consider red wood ants absent from Sicily.