Formica nigricans BONDROIT, 1912

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 : 160

Formica nigricans BONDROIT, 1912

Formica pratensis var. nigricans BONDROIT, 1912 [photos of lectotype, zoogeography]

This is the first available use of Formica rufa pratensis var. nigricans EMERY, 1909 . EMERY (1909) reported as collecting sites “eine südliche Form; aus den Seealpen und aus Spanien, auch im Apennin (Vallombrosa)”. A lectotype was fixed in worker specimen stored in MHN Genève labelled “Cotypus”, “ Formica rufa pratensis var. nigricans Em Vallombrosa ” (C. Emery’s handwriting), “ v. nigricans Em ” (A. Forel’s handwriting), and “MHNG ENTO 00085011”. The characters revealed in the photos in combination with zoogeography clearly indicate that F. pratensis var. nigricans is a junior synonym of F. pratensis and not of Formica lugubris . The type locality Vallombrosa (43.73° N, 11.56° E, 950 m) is situated in a geographic region, as it is with the whole Apennine, where boreomontane species of the F. lugubris species complex did not occur in the times of C. Emery ( BARONI URBANI 1971). All populations of boreomontane wood ants from the Apennine mountains known today go back to a massive artificial introduction performed during the years 1959 - 67 (e.g., PAVAN 1959).