Formica oreas Wheeler, 1903

Shattuck, Steve & Cover, Stefan, 2016, Taxonomy of some little-understood North American ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), Zootaxa 4175 (1), pp. 10-22 : 17

Formica oreas Wheeler, 1903

Formica oreas Wheeler, W.M. 1903: 643 . 4 worker, 4 queen syntypes, Woodland Park [38°59′N 105°03′W], Colorado, 8500ft., 26 July 1903 (W.M. Wheeler) (Museum of Comparative Zoology, examined) ; 6 worker syntypes, Manitou Springs (as Manitou) [38°52′N 104°55′W], Colorado (W.M. Wheeler) (Museum of Comparative Zoology) [http://www.antwiki.org/wiki/ Formica _ oreas ].

Formica oreas comptula Wheeler, 1913: 460 . 10 worker, 2 queen syntypes, Pullman [46°44′N 117°11′W], Washington, 10 April 1908 (W.M. Mann) (Museum of Comparative Zoology) [http://mczbase.mcz.harvard.edu/ guid/ MCZ: Ent:22717]. New synonym.

Wheeler (1913) described this taxon as a variety of F. oreas , stating that it was darker in color and more pilose than F. o re a s. Creighton (1950) could not confirm the pilosity differences but did find the darker color significant enough, when combined with the more northern distribution, to treat F. comptula as a subspecies of F. oreas . Syntype workers of F. comptula in the MCZC differ little in color or pilosity from collections of F. o re as from other parts of its range. However, Wheeler (1913) also described pilosity differences in the queen caste. These are far more noteworthy than the supposed differences in the workers. The syntype queens of F. comptula have longer, coarser, more erect, and more abundant pilosity than queens of typical F. o re a s. Queens from Arizona, Colorado, and Utah, all show typical shorter, fine-textured, “silky” F. oreas pilosity. Given the small amount of F. comptula material available, we provisionally interpret this as population level variation. Further collecting is needed to see whether queens from populations in the northern and far western states show pilosity like the F. comptula syntypes and if the variation is clinal rather than discrete. Pending better evidence, we feel it best to synonymize F. comptula with F. oreas at this time.

The known distribution of F ormica oreas includes Alberta, Canada and the following states in the US : Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming .