Myrmica Species Groups

The genus Myrmica is primarily a Holartic genus. These ants are a common element of the ant faunas of large parts of Europe and North America. Species identification can be difficult and frustrating. Radchenko and Elmes have been been steadily and consistently improving the taxonomy of the Palearctic species for more than 2 decades, with Seifert also making important contributions in this effort. Franceour has been studying the North American Myrmica for decades but little of his research has been finalized and published.

This listing of species groups is a work in progress and has many sources.

karavajevi group
as per Radchenko and Elmes (2003)


 * Myrmica kabylica
 * Myrmica karavajevi
 * Myrmica lemasnei

Myrmica social parasites. Although, we consider that M. karavajevi, M. lemasnei and M. kabylica are not sufficiently different from Myrmica to be considered as a separate genus, we agree with Seifert (1993b) that they differ from all other Myrmica on a subtle combination of size and body sculpture and we suspect they have different life-history strategies compared to the other socially parasitic Myrmica. Therefore we consider them as a new and distinct species-group (sensu Radchenko 1994a; Radchenko and Elmes 2001a) within Myrmica — the karavajevi group. The features of the karavajevi-group are small sized queens, no workers, a subpetiolar flange, a wide postpetiole, generally hairy, reduced tibial spurs, an individual cubital cell and males with 12 jointed antenna.

luteala group
as per Radchenko and Elmes (2003)


 * Myrmica luteola
 * Myrmica mirabilis

Nothing is known of the biology of M. luteota, purely on the grounds of its unusual combination of characters we placed it with Myrmica mirabile in the luteala-group (Elmes and Radchenko 1998), speculating that M. luteola might have a temporary socially parasitic life-style.

myrmicoxen group
as per Radchenko and Elmes (2003)


 * Myrmica arnoldii
 * Myrmica myrmicoxena

Myrmica social parasites. We propose to place M. myrmicoxena and M. arnoldii provisionally, together as the myrmicoxena-group, despite their wide geographic separation, because they are very similar morphologically and clearly differ from other Myrmica species. The host of M. myrmicoxena is M. lobicornis. The life history of M. arnoldii is unknown, but it often coexists with other species of the lobicornis-group, which contains the most abundant and dominant Myrmica species of South Siberia and Mongolia. Extrapolating from the observations of M. vandeli (Elmes, Radchenko and Thomas, in press) we predict that M. arnoldii might be shown to be a temporary social parasite of a Siberian lobicornis-group species.

rugosa group
as per Radchenko and Elmes (2003)

(incomplete list of species)
 * Myrmica aimonissabaudiae
 * Myrmica ereptrix

M. ereptrix clearly belongs to the rugosa-group, as does its host M. aimonissabaudiae, despite the peculiar, gross development of its postpetiole (see Radchenko and Elmes 2001a).

scabrinodis group
as per Radchenko and Elmes (2003)

(incomplete list of species)
 * Myrmica bibikoffi
 * Myrmica hirsuta
 * Myrmica laurae
 * Myrmica scabrinodis
 * Myrmica vandeli

M. laurae is a social parasite that has the same combination of characteristics as the karavajevi-group except that its queens are significantly larger. However, we do not place it in this group because by the shape of its scape the queens clearly belong to the scabrinodis-group together with the other social parasites M. bibikoffi, M. hirsuta and M. vandeli. Recently, moderately strong evidence has been produced to show that M. vandeli may be a temporary social parasite of M. scabrinodis colonies (Elmes, Radchenko and Thomas, in press), in which case, all these social parasites belong to the same species-group as their host species.