Solenopsis juliae (Arakelian, 1991)

Csosz, Sandor, Seifert, Bernhard, Laszlo, Mark, Yusupov, Zalimkhan M. & Herczeg, Gabor, 2023, Broadly sympatric occurrence of two thief ant species Solenopsis fugax (Latreille, 1798) and S. juliae (Arakelian, 1991) in the East European Pontic-Caspian region (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) is disclosed, ZooKeys 1187, pp. 189-222 : 189

Solenopsis juliae (Arakelian, 1991)

Diplorhoptrum juliae Arakelian, 1991. [description]

Notes.

The species was described from Armenia. The type series was collected by G. Arakelian in a clearing of an oak forest at 1750 m near to the village Arzakan [40.450°N, 44.608°E], 30 August 1988 ( Arakelian 1991). The ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war prevents a direct examination of type specimens deposited in the museums of Erevan, Kiev, and Moscow but the original description allows a fairly good conclusion that S. juliae is the oldest available name for our eastern species. This is based on three arguments: (1) using a conversion factor of 1.148 for Arakelian’s "head width before eyes" given by him as 0.72 mm, the holotype gyne has a CW of 0.827 mm; (2) the ratio CLSPD/CW in the holotype gyne taken from the drawing is 0.169. This results in a CLSPD of 0.140 mm; (3) Arakelian reported a reduced sculpture: "Body largely smooth and shiny. A weak superficial sculpture is notable on head sides, frontal lobes, around the antennal scrobes, on propodeum and waist". This means the absence of a notable sculpture on central vertex. This is precisely what we found as a character separating it from S. fugax . A discriminant 35.24*CW-58.91*CLSPD-22.59 provides a full separation of the 12 measured S. juliae and 32 measured S. fugax gynes with the former species ranging between -2.73 and -0.47 and the latter between +0.47 and +4.32. Run as wild-card, the holotype gyne of S. juliae scores -1.69 meaning a posterior probability of 0.9999. A synonymy of S. juliae with S. ilinei Santschi, 1936 and S. deserticola Ruzsky, 1905 is excluded by the much smaller ratio CL/CW.