Camponotus lateralis var. ebneri Finzi 1930

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 : 22-23

Camponotus lateralis var. ebneri Finzi 1930

The only specimen available was the type worker from Lebanon, stored in NHM Wien and labeled ‘Beskinta – Sannin, Liban. 16.VIII.’28. R. Ebner Mus. Caes. Vind.’, ‘ Type! Camponotus lateralis var. ebneri n. v. det. Finzi 1929’, ‘ANTWEB CASENT0915596’.

Diagnosis ( Tab. 2 ). The main difference to C. dalmaticus seems to be the much larger width of the dorsal propodeal plane.

Biology. unknown.

Comments. All forms of exploratory data analyses allocated the C.ebneri type specimen to the C. dalmaticus cluster and this was confirmed by a wild-card run in a 3-class LDA with posterior probabilities of p = 0.969 for C. dalmaticus , 0.006 for C. candiotes and 0.025 for C. piceus . However, PrW/CS 1.25 and MGr/CS 1.25 of the C. ebneri type are above the upper extremes of C. dalmaticus ( Tab. 3 ) and there is apparently a big gap between the Balkan range of C. dalmaticus and the Lebanon site of C. ebneri . For these reasons C. ebneri is not synonymized here and assumed to be an allopatric sister species of C. dalmaticus .