Camponotus lateralis var. candiotes Emery 1894

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 : 24-25

Camponotus lateralis var. candiotes Emery 1894

Investigated were 4 syntype workers labeled ‘ Creta (Cecconi) Omalo s Cata ....’ [last word of label illegible], ‘ SYNTYPUS Camponotus lateralis candiotes Emery, 1894 ’, ‘ C. lateralis var. candiotes Eme’ and 3 syntype workers labeled ‘ Creta (Cecconi) La C....’ [last word of label illegible], ‘ SYNTYPUS Camponotus lateralis candiotes Emery, 1894 ’, ‘ANTWEB CASENT 0905389’; all material MCSN Genova. Both syntype series are clearly allocated to the cluster of 17 samples given in the next paragraph if run as wild-card in a 5-class LDA considering the five related species shown in Tab. 3 – the series with four syntypes is assigned with p = 0.9998 and that with three syntypes with p = 1.0000.

All material examined. A total of 17 nest samples with 42 workers were subject to NUMOBAT investigation.

GEORGIA: Tbilissi, 1985.07.16 [41.700, 44.751, 690] ; Tbilissi, 1985.07.25 [41.70, 44.80, 600] . GREECE: Crete: Chania- 6 km SW, Agia , 2011.05.03 [35.467, 23.917, 22] ; Crete: Georgiopouli-E, 2007.04.30 [35.333, 24.350, 1] ; Crete: Georgiopouli-W, 2007.05.02 [35.367, 24.250, 1] ; Crete: Kato Daratso , 2011.05.06 [35.500, 23.983, 12] ; Crete: La ...(illegible), pre 1894.xx.xx, syntypes C. candiotes [35.0, 25.0, 700; guess] ; Crete: Lasithi , pre 1945 [35.08, 25.71, 341] ; Crete: Omalos Plateau , 2011.05.03 [35.333, 23.843, 1034] ; Crete: Omalos ,), pre 1894.xx.xx, syntypes C. candiotes [35.344, 23.905, 1040] ; Crete: Rodakino-Sellia , 2013.05.08 [35.205, 24.350, 301] ; Crete: vic. Preveli Beach , 2013.05.07 [35.182, 24.465, 58] ; Holomontas: Stagira, 2009.09.03, No X [40.517, 23.733, 539] ; Rhodos: Apollakkia, 2008.07.05 [36.050, 27.783, 34] ; Rhodos: Dimylia, 2008.07.09 [36.333, 28.033, 91] . TURKEY: Halkapinar- 32 km SE, 1997.05.08, No 224, No 226 [37.348, 34.360, 1700] .

Geographic range. Crete, Rhodes, Asia Minor, Georgia. Eastern parapatric sibling species of C. piceus without safely confirmed range overlap. The single-specimen sample from Holomontas: Stagira, which is outside the known range of C. candiotes has a low posterior probability of p = 0.820 when run as wild-card in an LDA against C. piceus and may be misidentified. There is sympatric occurrence with C. atricolor in Georgia.

Diagnosis. The character combinations to identify this species can be derived from the key, Tab. 3 and the following pictures in AntWeb.org: CASENT0281578 (minor worker), CASENT0281579 (minor), CASENT0905389 (minor, syntype of C. candiotes ) .

Biology. unknown.

Comments. The exploratory data analyses NC-part. hclust, NC-part.kmeans, NC-NMDS-k-means and NC-Ward provided partially contradictory results regarding the heterospecificity of C. candiotes and C. piceus when CS and all 12 RAV-corrected shape and seta characters are considered. NC-Ward suggested C. candiotes to form a separate cluster with only one sample being misplaced (error 1.1% in 87 samples). However, both NC-part. hclust and NC-part.kmeans did not confirm the presence of more than one cluster.Accepting the hypothesis formed by NC-Ward, a stepwise LDA was run which reduced the considered data set to the characters CL/CW 1.25, SL/ CS 1.25, ScI 1.25, MGr/CS 1.25, nSc 1.25 and PrL/CS 1.25. Under this setting, NC-part.hclust fully confirmed the hypothesis formed by NC-Ward with three samples of C. piceus remaining unclassified – i.e., being placed as outliers. NC-NMDS-k-means clustering fully confirmed the hypothesis of NC-Ward but NC-part.kmeans, however, failed again to confirm the presence of two clusters ( Fig. 13 ). With three exploratory data analyses confirming the final species hypothesis and one failing, I hypothesize C. candiotes to represent an eastern parapatric sibling species of C. piceus . The classification error in 180 individual workers is 1.1% by an LDA and 1.7% by a leave-one-out cross-validation LDA.

Figures

Figure 13. Classification of Camponotus candiotes (green bars) and C. piceus (red bars) by four exploratory data analyses considering body size and five RAV-corrected shape characters.The error relative to the final species hypothesis is 0% in NC-Ward, 0% in NC-NMDSk-means and 0% in NC-part.hclust. However, as indicated by black bars, 3.5% of the samples remained unclassified in NC-part.hclust and NC-part.kmeans failed to confirm two separate clusters.