{"pk":39778,"title":"Morphology, ecology and biogeography of Myrmecina sicula André, 1882, rediscovered after 140 years (Hymenoptera, Formicidae)","subtitle":null,"abstract":"The ant genus \nMyrmecina\n, whose diversity is mostly concentrated in SE-Asia and Oceania, counts four W-Palearctic species. The extremely euryecious and well-studied \nMyrmecina graminicola \noccurs from Iberia to the Caucasus and from the Maghreb to Scandinavia, while three little-known species (\nM. atlantis\n, \nM. melonii \nand \nM. sicula\n) coexist with \nM. graminicola\n in their narrow Maghrebian, Sardinian and Sicilian ranges, respectively. \nMyrmecina sicula \nhas been described about 140 years ago from a single site and two specimens only. Their unique morphology suggested the validity of this taxon ever since, but no additional specimens were found in the following century. We present the results of decades of sampling efforts across Sicily, resulting in the collection of \nM. graminicola \nfrom 70 sites and \nM. sicula \nfrom 13 sites. We confirm \nM. sicula \nunique\n \nmorphological identity and report on the marked distributional and ecological differences between the two species. \nMyrmecina graminicola \nis widespread and inhabits diverse, mainly forested habitats from lowland to high mountain sites, while \nM. sicula \nwas found in a very narrow region of old carbonate platform between NW-Sicily and the Egadi Islands, mostly in sparsely vegetated sites at mid to low-altitude. Reviewing their common morphological and biogeographic traits, we propose to consider \nM. atlantis\n, \nM. melonii \nand \nM. sicula \nas a distinct \nM. sicula \ncomplex, whose identity and history deserves further investigation through molecular analyses.","language":"en","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0","short_name":"CC BY 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\n\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"Short-range endemics (SRE)"},{"word":"Paleo-Tyrrhenian distribution"},{"word":"allopatric speciation"},{"word":"vicariance"},{"word":"paleoendemics"},{"word":"Sicily, Sardinia"},{"word":"Maghreb"}],"section":"Articles","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3pw2q8pq","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Enrico","middle_name":"","last_name":"Schifani","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Parma","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Antonio","middle_name":"","last_name":"Scupola","name_suffix":"","institution":"Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Verona","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Antonio","middle_name":"","last_name":"Alicata","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Catania","department":"None"}],"date_submitted":"2020-05-27T22:04:03Z","date_accepted":"2020-05-27T22:04:03Z","date_published":"2020-09-24T07:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/biogeographia/article/39778/galley/29959/download/"}]}