16. Temnothorax luteus (Forel 1874)

A S European species suspected to have had its glacial refugium in the Apennines (Seifert et al., 2014). It was recorded once from Etna by Baroni Urbani (1964a), and more doubtfully as T. cf. luteus by Buschinger et al. (1988) from the same locality. There are several species, including some still undescribed ones, we deem may have been confused with T. luteus by both authors. However, no Sicilian specimens we collected correspond to T. luteus as redefined by Seifert et al. (2014). Despite the interesting hypothesis stating that the main glacial refugium of T. luteus was probably in the Apennines (Seifert et al., 2014) (in contrast to T. racovitzai (Bondroit)), the actual distribution of T. luteus in the Italian peninsula is still unclear.