Formica santschii WHEELER, 1913

Seifert, Bernhard, 2021, A taxonomic revision of the Palaearctic members of the Formica rufa group (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) - the famous mound-building red wood ants, Myrmecological News 31, pp. 133-179 : 165

Formica santschii WHEELER, 1913

Formica rufa var. santschii WHEELER, 1913 [type investigation]

Formica santschii is WHEELER (1913) ’s replacement name for F. rufa var. alpina SANTSCHI, 1911 , which is a junior primary homonym of Formica adamsi var. alpina WHEELER, 1909 . SANTSCHI (1911) described his F. rufa var. alpina from the Alps north of Sondrio. Investigated were two syntype workers on separate pins stored in NHM Basel and labelled in F. Santschi´s handwriting. The larger specimen with CW 1754 µm is depicted in AntWeb ( ANTWEB 2021) under CASENT0912249 and is labelled “Valteline. Galli-Valerio”, “ Formica alpina € Sant.”, “type”. The smaller, damaged specimen with CW = 1685 µm on the other pin is labelled “Valteline. Galli-Valerio”, “ Formica alpina € Sant.” By morphology and geography, the F. santschii types could either belong to Formica lugubris or Formica paralugubris . The specimens were run as wild-cards in an LDA collecting 369 workers of the F. lugubris morphs A1 and A3 from the Alps in class 1, and 298 workers of F. paralugubris in class 2. The eleven characters available in the F. santschii types were CS, CL / CW 1750, SL / CS 1750, SL / Smax 1750, PeW / CS 1750, nSc 1750, nCH 1750, OccHL 1750, mPnHL 1750, nMet 1750, and MetHL 1750. With these data, the larger syntype worker was allocated to class 1 with p = 0.9674 but the smaller one with p = 0.9551 to class 2. It appears questionable if the two workers mounted on separate pins belong to the same nest sample. In order to save a stable nomenclature, a lectotype of F. santschii is fixed by present decision in the undamaged larger specimen labelled “CASENT0912249”.