Camponotus spissinodis Forel 1909

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 : 62

3. Camponotus spissinodis Forel 1909

The validity of this species, originally described from Tunisia, has long been uncertain or defined exclusively on the thickness of its petiole, as its name suggests (Forel, 1909; Emery, 1925). This subtle character was thought to allow the distinction of C. spissinodis from C. piceus (Leach 1825), yet it was never properly described with quantitative data (Forel, 1909; Emery, 1925). A recent revision of the lateralis group, even though only marginally treating this taxon, suggested considering C. spissinodis as a cryptic species similar to the Eastern-Mediterranean C. candiotes Emery 1894 and the European C. piceus (Seifert, 2019). According to the new analyses, the most distinctive characters to separate C. spissinodis from C. piceus lays in the shape of the scapi (Seifert, 2019). Camponotus spissinodis was recorded twice near the Sicilian Ionian coast: the village of Taormina (210 m asl) and the nearby Monte Ziretto (550 m asl) (Donisthorpe, 1927; Kutter, 1927). These are also the only Italian records of this species. On the other hand, the very similar C. piceus is widespread in Italy (Baroni Urbani, 1971) and was recorded from several Sicilian localities (Baroni Urbani, 1964a; La Pergola et al., 2008; Schär et al., 2020). We repeatedly collected C. piceus samples in a wide variety of habitats (from sea-level coastal localities to about 1400 m asl), without finding any convincing evidence of the presence of C. spissinodis sensu Seifert (2019). Also, preliminary molecular data did not suggest a strong differentiation between Tuscan and Sicilian C. piceus (Schär et al., 2020). It appears that C. spissinodis may benefit from a more focused taxonomic revision in the future, but at the same time previous records by Donisthorpe (1927) and Kutter (1927) bear no relation with the current interpretation of this species (Seifert, 2019), thus providing no evidence to consider this species as a part of the Sicilian and Italian fauna.