Camponotus sicheli Mayr 1866

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

2. Camponotus sicheli Mayr 1866

Forel (1879) provided the first Sicilian record of this North African species, without offering any precise locality. Subsequent authors who mentioned this species did not add further data (De Stefani, 1889; 1895; Emery, 1915; 1916; 1925; Donisthorpe, 1927; Monastero, 1950; Baroni Urbani, 1971; Poldi et al., 1995), but a more complete record came as the island of Ustica (Riggio & De Stefani Perez, 1887).

Cagniant (1996) elevated C. ruber, previously considered as a variety of C. sicheli, to species rank (also see a correction in Cagniant, 2006), considering C. sicheli to be an entirely black species and C. ruber a red and black species. While we offered here data on the presence of C. ruber in Sicily, we have never found entirely black specimens compatible with C. sicheli. While Cagniant (1996; 2006) did not offer detailed data to back his decision, and other authors did not follow the nomenclature change he proposed (see Seifert, 2019), the absence of colonies characterized by black workers in Sicily appears to support the distinctness of C. ruber from C. sicheli.