Myrmica spinosior Santschi 1931

Schifani, Enrico, Csősz, SÁndor, Viviano, Roberto & Alicata, Antonio, 2021, Ant diversity on the largest Mediterranean islands: on the presence or absence of 28 species in Sicily (Hymenoptera, Formicidae), Natural History Sciences 8 (1), pp. 55-70 : 65

13. Myrmica spinosior Santschi 1931

The distribution of the W Mediterranean M. spinosior in Italy is unclear outside Sardinia (Seifert 2005; Radchenko & Elmes, 2010; Schifani et al., 2021b). A recent record from Sicily (Etna) by Blatrix et al. (2020) shall be considered doubtful: its morphological identity as either M. sabuleti or M. spinosior was uncertain (Blatrix, pers. comm.), and no clear identification could be obtained in a DNA barcoding approach, which appears highly unreliable for the scabrinodis species-group (Blatrix et al., 2020). At present, we confidently confirm the following three Myrmica species from Sicily: M. lobulicornis , the relatively widespread M. sabuleti , and the endemic M. siciliana Radchenko et al. 2006 from Etna, Nebrodi and Madonie (Radchenko et al., 2006; Schifani & Alicata, 2018; authors’ unpublished data).