Nomenclaturial (In-)Consistency in Higher Classification of Ants

You would think that nomenclature is something pretty obvious and objective derived from and built on top of the scientific discoveries of the relationships of taxa. Furthermore you would expect that scientists have some sort of consistency in this conduct. Let's see how this applies to two recent studies by Phil Ward, Sean Brady, Ted Schultz and Brian Fisher on army ants and myrmicine ants.

The underlying preferred phylogenetic trees are here for the dorylines (army ants)

 

and the clade including Tetramorium and Leptothorax/Temnothorax of the myrimcines

The nomcenclaturial conclusions are well worth to follow. For the myrmicines Ward et al. make the following synonymies 

Temnothorax = Chalepoxenus syn.n.=Myrmoxenus syn.n.= Protomognathus syn.n.;

Tetramorium = Rhoptromyrmex syn.n.=Anergates syn.n. = Teleutomyrmex syn.n.

Protomognathus is not included in the current phylogeny, but because of some mtDNA based evidence included in the synonymy. 

At the same time, the sister clade including Leptothorax, no synonymy has been proposed.

Tetramorium includes now some of it social parasites Anergates and Teleutomyrmex that are listed in the IUCN RedList (eg Anergates, Teleutomyrmex) but not Strongylognathus. This will add to an additional confusion outside the taxonomic world. The reason for omitting Strongylognathus from synonymy is the older name than Tetramorium and thus all the Tetramoriums would have changed - this then is too much for the authors. So they stop here by mentioning to get to the ICZN to solve the problem later.

This somewhat arbitraty behavior is even more obvious. The same authors don't follow with their practice to clean up obvious historical artifacts in their work on dorylines. It is obvious, that all the doryline genera ought to be synonymized with Cerapachys (or the oldest available name), or then many old suppressed generic names would have to be revived (what the indirectly do in their figure, but not explictely in the text), and thus exactly the opposite of their lumping in the myrmicines. But nothing has been done.

If the phylogenetic analyses are that strong (why this might not be the case will be discussed in a follow up blog), why not have more genera, that in many ways can be diagnosed  with behavioral or morphological traits (in some cases even apomorphies) rather than have increasingly huge taxa in which informal species groups will be defined? The worst being the formicoid clade that is entirely based on molecular analysis. The advantage of diagnosable groups is obvious, and the handling of taxonomic information is simple with the current IT infrastructure where we can link all names to the respective database in place.

If there is such a strong believe in molecular data and analysis - because it is based on sound scientific analytical tools - why not be as strict in inferring the respective nomenclaturial changes? In the present case, this objectivity is definitely missing or not obvious.

Ant movies: The Trials of Life, Episode 7, Living Together

Ant movies: The Trials of Life, Episode 7, Living Together

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8g1BU29WVg 49:13

David Attenborough

14:11 Oecophylla in Australia, interaction with caterpillar; ants welcome caterpillar
17:41  Oecophylla in Australia, interactio with caterpillar; stealth caterpillar enters the nest to predate on grubs
21:20 escape of of the butterfly - not chemical but mechanical defense through slipery scales


Back to overviews

Ant movies: Krieg der Ameisen (La guerre des fourmis)

Krieg der Ameisen (La Guerre des Fourmis)  (Arte)

Olivier Blight, Eric Provost, Stephand Caut, Jim Xerda, Volker Witte)

[This movie is 3:02.08 but in fact it is three times the same movie. Recording started at 2:02, the begin oft the third repetition is at 2:21:30]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXqtYN3biW4

2:02:00 Monitoring methods; pitfalls, pooter
2:03:00 Tapinoma not affected by Linepithema
2:04:58 overview of Linepithema distribution, simulation model on the affect oflimate change
2:05:34 Volker Witte on Linepithema in Germany
2:05:56 study of ant language and communication
2:06:30 origin of the gland (Pavans gland), dissection, experiment to show the impact of the gland substances.
2:08:30 life cycle: brood
2:09:30 Donana NP: study of the impact of Linepithema on predators and other fauna (Elena Angulo), using Quercus suber,
2:10:45 experimental design
2:12:45 results
2:13:00 Stephane Caut: impact assessment, dissecting a toad
2:14:30 life cycle; fight on the power in the nest
2:15:00 impact on Camponotus vagus? Recruitment, fight between C and L; use of SEM for tarsus of L
2:20:02 Argentine ant the largest predator of the world
2:20:10 The impact of L in Corsica

2:21.30 Krieg der Ameisen 3
2:22:47 description of the local ant fauna, ca 160 local species; Messor life cycle,
2:24:20 Description of a European project to study ant faunas (which one?) Olivier Blight, Eric Provost (Aix-en-Provence)  Cereste in S-France
2:25.50 the original distribution of Linepithema and the history invasion: Madeira first record, than mainlaind.
2:27:00 moving of a nest, and the way they do it
2:28:29 polyploidy: 15-20 queens in one nest
2:29:30 queen
2:30:19 agressivity test
2:30:50 food
2:31:30 fight with Messor
2:33:55 aggessivity test comparing nests of different geographic origin: no fights
2:36:10 chemical analysis – the profiles are equivalent
2:38:00 use of water and storage
2:39:08 Aphaenogaster nest, fight with L, recruitment, attack from hundred to hundred thousand of ants attack
2:41:20 killing of the queen (but this is wrong, this is a Camponotus worker)
2:42:07 The impact of argentine ant on the ecosystem (Provost): L have no enemies and thus can distribute unlimited.
2:43.30 impact of L in Donana NP and especially their impact on Quercus suber ecosystem. Jim Xerda
2:45:21 measuring the speed of discovery of new pray: L the fastest ant in discovering food – but does not work when too hot, where other ants can work (food competition);
2:47:30 competition against other animals: but no quantitative measurments.
2:48:50 new nest of L
2:49:13 nest mould
2:50:00 tending of aphids
2:51:30 description of Corse with more than 80 ant species.
2:52:30 search of the front line argentine ants / native fauna.
2:52:40 use of baits
2:54:30 no linear expansion, but human impact that assures that they invade much faster
see the begin

Back to overviews

Ant movies

(Popular) Science 

There is a fascinating, growing number of popular science movies on ants becoming available. To use them for my own work, I try to add tags describing the subject covered.


1. Alles über Ameisen 52.07. EO Wilson, Nigel Franks
2. Krieg der Ameisen 3:02:08. Arte. Discussion of Argentine Ants
3. Wild City of Ants 44:56.  National Geographic. Ted Schultz, Alex Wild, Nigel Franks
4. Die heimliche Weltmacht   43:14. Arte. Bernd Hölldobler
5. Planet Ant - Life Inside The Colony 1:28.46. Leaf cutter ants kept in artificial nest
6. Ant colony raids a rival nest 3:44. BBC. Myrmecocystus
7. Silver Desert Ant, Cataglyphis bombycinus 12:31 BBC, Rüdiger Wehner, David Attenborough
8. The amazing Cataglyphis ant 2:52. BBC, David Attenborough; Cataglyphis bombycinus
9. Lord of the Ants 52:52 PBS. About EO Wilson.
10. Empire of The Desert Ants  55:48. BBC. Myrmecocystus
11. Butterfly eggs and caterpiller survival: Myrmica and lycaenids, ichneumonids.  6:31, BBC, David Attenborough. Life in the Undergrowth.
12. Polyrhachis in mangrove forest, living in the intertidal zone. 3:54. BBC, David Attenborough. Life in the Undergrowth. (submersible life, communication, territorial disputes)
13.  Pogonomyrmex (harvester ants) and Aphaenogaster  in Arizona. 3:24,  BBC. David Attenborough. Life in the Undergrowth. Competition
14. The Trials of Life, Episode 7: Living Together. 49:13 BBC. David Attenborough
15. Honey Ants - A nice sweat treat! 1:53 Animal Planet. Camponotus inflatus.
15b. Yummy Hnoey Ants. 2:53 Australian Screen. Camponotus inflatus
16. NPR Science: Ants That Count! 4:35 NPR: Experiment to show that ant can count their steps, Cataglpyhis, Wehner.
17. Cataglyphis bombycinus,  7:04. Tunis. Including shots of soldiers outside the nest.
18. Odontomachus trap jaw ant:  1:29 Ondontomachus in nature, Alex Wild
19. Anochetus trap jaw ant: 3:06 High speed camera movie shot in the laboratory
20. Ants: super soldiers 4:21. Earthtouchnews.com. A potpurry of ant behavior related  to predation
21 Ant societies and what we can learn from them: Laurent Keller at TEDxLausanne 17:30

Art

1. Un chien andalou (1928). Luis Buñuel.  4:06; 8:38

Ant Movies: Alles über Ameisen

Alles über Ameisen (animal planet with EO-Wilson, Nigel Franks)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR8X1HA18hQ

1:38 Oecophylla weaver ants
3:21 the weight of all ants is about the same as all humans
5:00 Metathoracal (Metapleural gland) ants a chemical plants
6:00 functional morphology, mandible
6:30 Wilson, pheidole
9:09 morphological diversity
9:18 social life as character of ants: Wood ants
10:00 social work makes you stronger..
10:32 division of labor – all work can be done by all, only queen is irreplaceable; life cycle
11:04 trophallaxis
11:30 role of queen – different casts
12:00 larval development
13:00 life cycle, sexual production, mating competition
14:00 the fate of males, nest foundation by queens
14:24 origin of ants
16:30 communication
17:30 trail pheromone
18:45 nest mate recognition – cracking of the code: oecophylla and spdiers
20:00 oecophylla and spiders fighting
21:09 Cataglyphis bombycina, orientation, Wehner
22:19 vector navigation vizualization
23.21 polarization patterns
25:30 Attine
29:15 antibiotic like substances / metapleural gland Beattie
31:24 extracting metapleural content
33:03 Honey pot ants, Mulga, Camponotus inflatus
23:25 Wood ant; thermoregulation
37:18 Smaragd Ameisen, Polyrhachis with Lycaenidae silk nests; rattle ants because the communicate via audible vibrations
39:20 Phil deVries about lycaenids
43:31 Oecophylla
44:21 cracking of defensive behavior and chemical code by a spider
46:23 driver ants Eciton
47:28 Nigel Franks human /ants comparison: what is the chain of command: top down vs bottom up
49:12 decision making
50:50 study of biology: make something complex from simple structure: individual behavior to a complex behavior. IN ants no hierarchy, no leader, but everybody is involved in decision making

Back to overviews

antbase down: up again

Antbase is up again. All the citations are now linked again to the original descriptions, or all the citations given to the group. This new system allows us to provide access to all the descriptions (via antbase), or subsequent citations (via HOL, linked from the bottom of the antbase search return page) irrespective whether the publication is open access, we have a copyright waver or they are copyrighted.

What we have not resolved yet is access to all the publications. We are few steps away from a solution, but need to implement it. The solution will not include a per se open access but via a login. What the condidtion for a login will be is still under discussion. Certainly, those who are supporting antbase will get it.

antbase down: (almost) alive again

After far too long, antbase.org is up again. It is not the same as before, because we changed our policy. We cannot risk again to be shut down because we have copyrighted material online. For our convenience we provide at the beginning none or only to those publications access that are older than 1926, the cut of day for copyrighted material, and gradually will add more to it. This is not the solution that we envision, but that’s reality we life in, and as long as we publish in non-Open Access journals we are our own culprit.

However, being now based in Switzerland, we have the legal environment to provide access to all the descriptions, irrespective of their date of publication (for details see Agosti & Egloff). We thus will make it to our goal to provide as in the past at least access to all the descriptions.

For those offered support during the last month, we would like to suggest to monitor antbase and let us know, whether we are missing out on a description and the respective original treatment. This will help us to stay up to date with less effort from our side. Hopefully at some point, the goal of a synchronization of the our database (the Hymenoptera Name Server) and antcat will work out, and make all of use more efficient and using all our individual strengths.

If you are even more devoted to provide access, you can help us to mark up the publications on Plazi and make it accessible much more widely, such as in the Encyclopedia of life or antweb.org.

For now, Norm and Joe are working at the HNS side to insert all the links that have been taken down. This should be done in the next couple of days so that antbase will be fully operational as described above.

OA ant publications: Neotropical Ants issue

Hindawi published in the revitalized Psyche (70 articles published only this year) a special edition Advances in Neotropical Myrmecology, including the description of some very unusual ants like the second species of Tatuidris.

From a cataloguing point of view and thus also from a nomenclatorial point, I do not find an indication that the journal is not just an e-only-journal but has the still necessary printed version. Also it is a bit awkward that there is no proper volume number, as Psyche had before, but just the year.

Despite all of this, I am always delighted to see publications from the sprawling Neotropical ant community, and that ants are used in environmental and especially monitoring studies.

antbase down

Antbase is still down, even 27 days after it has been shut down - the story about that will be written up with due distance to this event.

This morning I met my colleagues Helen and Sakine to discuss the future development of the Iran Ant Fauna Project. In this situation, I am the user of antbase and thus realize what it means – if I would not know already – to be cut off from the literature supply.

One of the first thoughts was to think about how we can avoid this in future, and this I am sure will not happen again. The second thought was about the ephemeral nature of the Internet. Somebody outside a project decides to shut down a service and off is such a rather expensive resource. This again is something to keep in mind, but not very helpful right now. The third thought was, I can’t believe it, and there must be ways around.

And there are.

Remember, one important element of antbase was that you can get from a reference directly to the respective page or publication. And this service is now cut, because the link exists, but it does not resolve. The way around is to do the following that works to publications at around 2009.
1. Go to archive.org’s WayBackMachine and search for antbase.org
2. Click the latest snapshot of antbase and enter the search term you want. You can get all the publications out this way.
3. Copy the title of the publication you want into the search field on the upper right corner of archive.org and you will get the respective publication from the ant collection Brian and I once helped the Internet Archive to establish.

We are now close to have the entire data moved to a new site and will be able to relaunch antbase within the next days.

General issues are dealt with here.

Specimen collection

Today I got the most extraordinary ant collection for identification ever. I wonder, what words can mean, and how loosely they can be interpreted. I met this student from Mashad at IRIPP to discuss his project to write a book about the ants of Iran. Among others we discussed how he has to label and mount the ants. For that I showed him some examples, and explained it again at the recent first meeting of Iranian myrmecologists and this is the result. Yes, I do not speak Farsi, and I eat up ends of my words, but even pictures (the slides with mounted specimens) don't do the job. A real challenge for intercultural communication.
Even tough I would have preferred a detailed list of specimen information, his list at least includes geo-coordinates (I assume from a GPS in the field) which allows to derive all the rest of the information.
The good thing - though demanding some time - is that there is a wet collection as well.

Conflicting Ant Meeting Schedules

Though the resources in ant taxonomy are globally used (eg antbase.org, see clustermap, antweb.org) the organizers or ant conferences are not. In fact, this year the two major conferences on ants, the ANeT conference
and the Simpósio de Mirmecologica that attracts over 400 participants mananges to have their meetings almost exactly at the same dates 17-21 October and 16-20 October respectively. The meeting of the Oesterreichische Myrmekologentreffen, that has a very local target audience is another one this year.
It would make sense to alternate the conferences so that one could attend both, not least so that the global efforts could be coordinated.
Global efforts, collaboration? This is still a "Fremdwort" in the myrmecological world, where too many try compete to build the ultimate global ant information system, and most of them miss the resources to deliver nor do they have a plan for long time maintenance of their databases. Though this reflects to some extend the amateurish aspect of scholarly online communication, it is at the same time a tremendous waste of resources, and a lot is done by copy-paste of already existing material, such as pdfs, taxonomic lists, images.

Fungi making zombie ants

I was always puzzled by the fungis growing out of ants in the tropics, as well as Microcoelia parasitize ant and before they kill their pray alter their behavior so that it is to the benefit of the parasite. In the case of fungi the spores have to be disseminated, in the case of the Microcoelia the entire and has to be placed so that the next sheep will eat the ant whilst it is browsing.

The story in PLoS One reported in Wired magazine is not just cool and explains mechanisms, but it is in a geeks journal.

Ant Meeting: Österreichisches Myrmekologentreffen

During this year, there will be several ant meetings which I will list once they are posted.
The first this year is the Österreichisches Myrmekologentreffen
Montag, 7. März 2011, 900 – 1700 Uhr
Fakultätszentrum für Biodiversität
Rennweg 14, 1030 Wien

It has the following program:
Programm
ab 9:00 Ankunft und Kaffee
10:00 Begrüßung Konrad Fiedler
10: 20 – 12:00 Myrmekologische Forschung in Österreich
und angrenzenden Regionen
10:20 ‐ 10:40 J. Chlumský, Veronika Jílková, P. Koutecký, M. Štech
Dispersal possibilities and adaptations for myrmecochory
in genus Melampyrum
10:40 ‐ 11:00 Melanie Tista
Preliminary results on macroecological patterns in European
ant communities
11:00 ‐ 11:20 Herbert Zettel, Daniela Magdalena Sorger
Schnappkiefer, Widerhaken, blaue Piraten und andere Merkwürdigkeiten –
die Philippinen, die Galápagos‐Inseln Asiens
11:20 ‐ 11:40 Line V. Ugelvig
Pathogen response in ant societies is influenced by geneticdiversity
11:40 ‐ 12:00 Veronika Jílkov, L. Matějíček, J. Frouz
Changes in the pH and other soil chemical parameters in soil
surrounding wood ant (Formica polyctena) nests
12:00 – 13:30 Mittagspause
13:30 – 13:50 Florian M. Steiner, Birgit C. Schlick‐Steiner, Herbert Zettel
Die Entwicklung der Myrmecological News (vormals
Myrmecologische Nachrichten) zu einem international
beachteten Fachjournal
13: 50 – 15:10 Heimische Ameisenfauna
13:50 ‐ 14:10 Florian Glaser
Gefährdung und Schutz ostalpiner Ameisen und die
Verantwortlichkeit Österreichs – ein Aus‐ und Überblick
14:10 ‐ 14:30 Herbert C. Wagner
Zum faunistischen Stand der Ameisen Südösterreichs
14:30 ‐ 14:50 Erich Zormann
Artenvielfalt von Ameisen im Wienerwald
14:50 ‐ 15:10 Johann Ambach
Schwindende Vielfalt? – Eine Myrmekolologische
Bestandsaufnahme Oberösterreichs
15:10 ‐ 16:00 Kaffeepause
16:00 – 17:00 Heimische Ameisenfauna (Fortsetzung)
16:00 ‐ 16:20 Florian Glaser, Herbert C. Wagner
Die große Kerbameise (Formica exsecta) – Insekt des Jahres 2011
16:20 ‐ 16:40 Herbert C. Wagner
Ein neuer arboricoler Temnothorax für Österreich
16:40 ‐ 17:00 Melanie Tista
Sammelmethoden bei Ameisen – Ist eine Aufwandsreduktion möglich?

Please register before the end of Februrary 2011.
Mag. Melanie Tista
melanie.tista@univie.ac.at, 01/4277‐57411
www.univie.ac.at/animal_biodiversity

The meeting is organized by
Univ.‐Prof. Mag. Dr. Konrad Fiedler
Mag. Melanie Tista
Department für Biodiversität der Tiere
Universität Wien

Overwintering of Ants

When I visited Genady Dlussky in Moscow in 1985, he told me about all the ecological research going on Magadan in the Fareast of the former Sowjet-Union. He explained the mechanisms ant use to survive up to -30degree C. Finally, 2010, a comprehensive publication Overwintering and Cold-hardiness of Ants in the Northeast of Asia is a comprehensive book

summing up 30 years of studies on the ecology and physiology of ants under extreme northern conditions, virtually at the northern boundaris of their geographical distribution.

.
It has lavish illustrations and an account for each species studied.

It is a very helpful summary and ought be a read well beyond ant ecologists: It covers another edge of the ants that is really amazing, and in fact a lot of the results, especially the physiology, might apply too other invertebrates living under these harsh conditions.

The book is available from Pensoft Publishers, Sofia.

Myrmica monograph

In the coming days a huge monograph "Myrmica ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of the Old World" will be published.

It is the first taxonomic review of the entire Old World fauna of the widespread temperate ant genus Myrmica that is famed for its interactions with many social parasites of high nature conservation interest, e.g. Large Blue butterflies (Phengaris spp.)
This about 800 pages monograph is more than a traditional taxonomic review, it gives the history of the taxonomic treatment of Myrmica, summarizes the current knowledge of the social biology and ecology of the genus, analyses the zoogeography of the various species and outlines the author’s views on the evolution and speciation within the genus.
The authors currently recognize 142 extant and 5 extinct species from the Old World and they provide Identification Keys to the species for each of seven geographic regions. This should make the Keys more user-friendly for non-specialists.
The locations of the type specimens are noted in the taxonomic catalogue, which is arranged alphabetically by species, as are the accurate line-drawings of every species. These illustrate features such as the shape and sculpture of the head and body, used in the identification keys. This arrangement makes it easy to find the data for any particular species.
There is a full list of all names ascribed to genus Myrmica and a table of synonyms from among the valid names is provided. The etymology of many of the names is interesting and provides insights to thoughts of the original authors as does the short biographies are made for all authors of more than one valid species of Myrmica.
The authors believe that there are many species of Myrmica yet to be discovered, particularly in the Indo-Oriental regions and in the southern mountains of Eurasia. This book provides the essential starting point for future studies.
Radchenko is one of Europe’s leading ant taxonomists and an expert on the ant fauna of the Palaearctic, while Elmes is an ecologist and eco-physiologist who has made a particular study of Myrmica ants over a 45 year career.

Both authors, Elmes and Radchenko have already extensively published on the subject, and it is very helpful to get all their widely scattered publications in one large monograph. In the old tradition of ant myrmecologists, the monograph is pretty costly and not open access and thus it will as such not be widely accessible. The challenge will be how to process 800 pages and make the descriptions online accessible at Plazi to share already available Myrmica treatments, and thus complete all the treatments for the Old World species in places like EOL or antweb.

The details of the publication are as follows:

Myrmica ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of the Old World
Alexander G. Radchenko and Graham W. Elmes
ca 800 pages, 332 figs, 162 maps; hardcover, 165 x 235 mm.

Editor: Natura optima dux Foundation, Warsaw, Poland
Issue data: December 2010

Price: 150 EUR + postage (after 31 January 2011)

Orders:
Natura optima dux Foundation
Wilcza 64
00-679 Warszawa, Poland

orders@miiz.waw.pl
fax 48 22 629 63 02

Leaf cutter ants: the frenzy of publishing

If you like lavishly illustrated books on ants, you might want to consider Hölldobler and Wilson's latest oeuvre: The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct. If you prefer those images moving - images that are even more impressive then you might want to get Thaler's movie Ameisen, die heimliche Weltmacht. One of the most impressive scene is the concrete mold of an entire attine nest in Southern Brazil. This book is an excerpt of a chapter on the authors book "The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies" that has been extended. Attines are at the very moment one of the most fascinating area in research well beyond ants that has generated a huge amount of insights, enabled mainly through DNA technologies that allows to study their fungi, their bacterias and other commensals living in this often huge system.
That it is hip is more than confirmed by the authors of the present book: Both of them are very eloquent writers but for my taste a bit too opportunistic by summing up ideas in a form, that are neither scientific nor popular in a general sense. The ideas presented get referenced in scientific writing later on, and not so much the original authors. This is a long history going back at least to the begin of the sociobiology debate and Bill Hamilton's genetic theory on social behavior.

A differnt kind of critique is in Mikheyev's review in Myrmecological News.

(...) a part of me wants the comprehensive fungus-gardener reference that will serve as the cornerstone of attine research, one that focuses on the cuttingedge discoveries and debates. But is it possible to write such a book today? Probably not, given the accelerating pace of research in this field, and the admittedly limited market niche. But perhaps books are no longer the best format for this sort of material. Rather, knowledge can be better summarized in wiki-based repositories built by the community, which can remain up to date and relevant continuously.
Although the current academic system does not reward individual scientists for investing into such endeavors, perhaps, as well-acknowledged masters, HÖLLDOBLER and WILSON could lead the way. What if the next version of The leafcutter ants would exist as a beautifully written community maintained online reference?

At the current time, there is no fame and money involved in Wiki's and too much of altruism required to run such a tool, that, without doubt will be the future; certainly not in Wilson's and Hölldobler's generation, may be not even in our, but the next generation of scientists.

[Photocredit: Thaler]

A new Asphinctopone and way of publishing

Peter Hawkes just published the description of a new species of Asphinctopone, A. pilosa. This is an interesting read and shows some ways on how to present taxonomic data.

The extensive description of only one specimen, the holotype, is followed by lavish, standard digital photography, and most importantly, distribution maps. It shows not just where the ant has been found, but where its congers have been found, pointing out that this find is important because it dramatically expands the distribution to the East of Africa. What I like though is that he added an additional map, the potential distribution map derived from a bioclimatic model (BIOCLIM). One might discuss, whether this approach can be applied to an entire genus (as done here) rather than a single species, but it shows clearly a way that would help to understand the distribution of species much better than how we ordinarily present our data.
The missing point is, that the data of this analyis is not available nor in the present publication nor GBIF.

How many specimens are good enough for a description?

Paknia and Radchencko describe in their recent paper two new Cataglyphis species from Iran: Cataglyphis pubescens and Cataglyphis stigmatus based samples from one and two locations respectively.

The descriptions are not accompanied by either DNA (Bar-)-Codes nor adequate images. The gray scale images do not live up to standards in the ant world (antweb.org), nor are they good enough to see the characters, nor are they available on existing antsites, not are the males described whose genitalia are the ultimate species level identification tool.

This study contributes to a fauna that is only known from literature references, including a compilation of names that one ought to believe the authors. That this could be done differently demonstrate to recent publications by McArthur and Heterick covering both Australia: The former with a lavishly illustrated compendium and key of the Camponotus of South Australia, the latter with a detailed account and key to the ants of Western Australia.

For anybody working in such an area, it would be of tremendous help, if those species would properly be documented.
I also would recommend to refrain from describing new species from one or two samples outside the context of a generic revision that provides the background why this species deserves to be described based on such poor data.

Of wood ants and bioindicators

Bernasconi et al concluded in their study of European wood ants that their result "represents a clear breakthrough for discriminating between F. lugubris and F. paralugubris and is likely to be helpful in large-scale biomonitoring".

The red wood ants are the dream candidate of the last fifty years for bio-control and monitoring, but they made it never to be actually used. Why do they remain a candidate? May be there is something behind, that they are nevertheless not as good and too complicated and little understand as all the many authors would like to have it. Citing Gösswald 1990 (G¨osswald, K. (1990) Die Waldameise. Band 2: Die Waldameise
in ¨Okosystem Wald, ihr Nutzen und ihre Hege. AULA-Verlag,
Wiesbaden.) seems to be rather ironic and making the point.

This study is also a part of the tradition of European taxonomists and related specialists to claim by solving a local problem to have found the solution to the complex taxonomy, better complex demography of wood ants. First, wood ants are not just lugubris and paralugubris, but include more species. Second, they both have an extensive range with quiet some variation, especially the widely distributed lugubris. Third, there is hybridization observed in several populations.

Why not do what Dlussky already 1967 in this revision of the genus suggested, that the entire populations ought be included? If this genus is so important, a large scale study should be conducted to clean up the mess and produce genetic markers that are based on the entire population of wood ants.

All 2009 ant taxonomy publications online

We are almost there where we want to be: To have an instant feed of new ant taxonomy publications into the Web, through linking the taxpub-converted treatmetents from EOL, Zoobank, HNS. We are not there, because we still get new publications, such as Hetericks "Ants of Western Australia". But this shows the sluggishness of our publication system. First, few people are aware of what is happening. Then it is published locally, and wouldn't there be connections, nobody besides few people in Western Australia and some ant colleagues would know about this.

[Sorry, I can't add link, because my system at the AMNH is down due to a snowstorm on the East coast of the US - we'll take care of this later]