Myrmica gebaueri

Found on montane to subalpine grassland, usually pastures. Nests in soil, under stones or in grass tussocks. Polygynous.

Identification
The separation of Myrmica gebaueri and M. tibetana is most difficult and a safe discrimination on the worker individual level is only possible by the multivariate analyses described by Seifert et al. (2018). Compared to M. tibetana, M. gebaueri shows smaller eyes and longer and more diverging propodeal spines. A parsimonious morphometric method allows a determination on nest sample level if two or three workers per sample are measured. We simplified the species delimitation procedure by using absolute linear measurements and by reducing the number of characters for the condition that the error at nest sample level was zero. We emphasize at this point that the measuring instructions for each character have to be considered. The extracted morphometric method requires five minutes working time in a mounted specimen. With all measurements recorded in mm, a linear discriminant function

D(3) = 62.835 EYE + 44.41 SPBA - 50.213 SP - 15.713

resulted in an error of 0% on the nest sample level. Samples with D(3) < 0 are classified as Myrmica gebaueri, those above this threshold as M. tibetana. The error on the worker individual level was 5.6% in 126 specimens.

The easy separation from Myrmica bactriana, the three species of the M. smythiesii complex (Myrmica fortior, Myrmica smythiesii,  Myrmica wittmeri) and from Myrmica tenuispina has been treated in the section considering possible synonymies in Seifert et al. (2018).

Distribution
NE Tibet between 35.5 and 38.0° N and 99.8 and 102.8° E, in altitudes of 2900 - 3500 m.

Distribution based on type material
Tibet.

Nomenclature

 *  gebaueri. Myrmica gebaueri Seifert et al., 2018: 105, figs. 7-11 (w.) TIBET.

Type Material

 * Holotype labeled “CHI: 37.1852° N, 102.7844° E Tianshu station-1.2 S, 2939 m moist pasture, under stone R.Schultz 2011.08.04-044” and “Holotype Myrmica gebaueri Seifert et al. 2018”,.
 * Two worker paratypes on a different pin, 21 worker and 14 male paratypes stored in ethanol – all from the same nest sample and with equal collecting data label as the holotype; all material stored in . Three worker paratypes with the same labeling in.