W. M. Wheeler.
Questions on Nomenclature Connected with the Ant Genus Lasius and its Subgenera.
Psyche 23(6):168-173, 1916.

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168 Pqche [December
M. clavata Stal the third antennal segment is more slender, the fourth conical, in the long-winged form the costal margins are distinctly curved, not parallel, and the discoidal area extends
slightly beyond the middle of the hemielytra; in M. lurida Stal the third and fourth antennal segments are longer, scarcely cla- vate; and in M. uniformis Stal the antennae are much shorter. QUESTIONS OF NOMENCLATURE CONNECTED WITH THE ANT GENUS LASIUS AND ITS SUBGENERA.
BY WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER,
Bussey Institution, Harvard University.
There seems to be no end to the nomenclatorial cataclysms pre- cipitated by men who delight in resuscitating and reediting musty entomological documents that have been unfortunately spared by the tooth of time to plague those among us who wish to see taxon- omy rapidly stabilized so that we may be able to give all our atten- tion to more interesting and important matters. Just as we were beginning to flatter ourselves that a few common insect names in universal use for Ihe greater part of a century must at last be immune from the inroads of the resuscitators we are informed by Morice and Durrantl that our familiar generic name Lasius, which has been borne so long by the common garden ant, probably the most abundant insect of the northern hemisphere, must be consigned to the synonymic limbo and replaced by a new name. The case is so clearly stated by Donisthorpe in his excellent mono- graph of British ants2 that I shall quote his account of it. "Fab- ricius (Syst. Piez., 415, 1804) published a heterotypical genus Lasius for the reception of ten species of ants, but this use of the name is invalid since Lash (Type Apis quadrimaculata Panz.) had already been used by Jurine for a genus of bees [Erlangen Litteraturzeitg., 1, 164, No. 33, 1801 : Nouv. M6th. Hym., 235- 238, No. 33, Pf. 4, 33, 11.33. 18071. Latreille, Gen. Crust. 1 The authorship and first publication of the "Jurinean" Genera of Hymenoptera: being a reprint of a long-lost work of Panzer, with a translation into English, and Introduction and Bibliographical and Critical Notes. Trans. Ent. Soc., London, 1914 (1915), pp. 339-436. 2 British Ants, Their Life History and Classification. Plymouth, Wm. Brendon and Son,
Ltd., 1915, p. 186.




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19161 Wheeler-The Ant Genus Lask and its Subgenera 169 Ins. 4.126 (1809) sunk Lasius F. as a synonym of Formica; and the Fabrician name ceased to be used till 1861, when Mayr (Europ. Forrnicid., 49, 1861) revived and recharacterized Lasius F., adopting niger L. as his type. Bingham Faun. Brit. India. Hym. 2, 338 (1903) and Wheeler Ann. New York Acad. Sc., 21, 165 (1911), also cite niger as the type. This species was also adopted as the type by Morice and Durrant Trans. Ent. Soc., London, 1914, 9, 421-423 (1915), who gave the following reasons for the change of the name: "In the Systema Piezatorum Fabricius made use of Jurine's name Lasius but applied it to a genus of ants which he separated from Formica L. and later authors have ignored Jurine's Lasius, no doubt because the publication of the Pieza- torum (1804) antedates that of the Nouvelle Mkthode (1807). But the real date of Lasius Jrn. as we now learn, is May 30, 1801 (Erlangen list), å Lasius F. (1804) therefore sinks as a homonym of the earlier Lash Jrn. A new name for Lash F. is necessary; there being apparently no existing synonym, we therefore propose that it be called Donisthorpea in recognition of Mr. H. St. J. K. Donisthorpe's careful investigations into the bionomics of this and other Heterogynous genera."
A study of Morice and Durrant shows that the article which they unearthed in the Erlangen Litteraturzeitung of 1801 was published anonymously, but that in a footnote to page 7 of the Kritische Revue of 1806 Panzer admitted that he was its author. It is clear, furthermore, that Panzer cited Lasius and several other Hymenopterous genera as Jurine's. My friend Professor Cockerell writes me that he regards the Panzer article as having no taxo- nomic status both because it was published anonymously and be- cause it did not appear in a scientific journal. I incline to agree
with him, though I am compelled to admit that the publication of the genera as Jurine's and not as those of the anonymous author may put a different construction on the matter. This
evidently determined Morice and Durrant to accept Lasius and certain other genera as being valid and as antedating those of Fabricius. So far as I am able to learn, cases of this kind are not specifically provided for in our various nomenclatorial codes. Accepting for the moment the correctness of Morice and Dur- rant contention that Lask Jurine must supplant Anthophora among the bees and that the genus Lasius Fabr. must be renamed,



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170 Psyche [December
we may next inquire whether the introduction of the name Donis- thorpea was justified. Little study of the history of the ant genus Lasius is needed to establish the fact that there are at least three other names, each of which would take precedence of the one SUE- gested by the authors under consideration. In 1840 Shuckardl gave the name Formicina to a genus, which according to his state- ment contained what we now call Formica rufa and Lasius flavus, so that if no resuscitator succeeds in exhuming some other name suggested between 1807 and 1840, Formicina should be chosen to replace Lasius Fabr., with L. ftavus as the type. Shuckard evi- dently selected the large Formica herculeana L. as the type of his genus Formica (our present Camponotus) and placed the smaller species, which we now assign to Formica and Lasius, in his genus Formicina. A second name Acanthomyop, was proposed by Mayr in 1862* for the North American Lasius clauiger Roger. This name has since been retained as that of a subgenus characterized by three-jointed instead of six-jointed maxillary palpi in the worker and female. R~zsky,~ in 1913, recognized two additional sub- genera: Dendrolasius and Chthonolasius, the type of the former being L. fuliginosus Latr.; that of the latter, L. flavus L. Chthono- lusius, therefore, falls as a synonym of Formicina Shuckard, but even Dendrolasius would take precedence of Donisthorpea. If, however, Formicina takes the place of Lasius as a generic name, the genotype must be shifted to L. flavus, a species belonging to what is now a different subgenus, so that Donisthorpea could be retained as the name of a subgenus with L. niger as the type. The genus would then have the following composition : Genus Formicina Shuckard ( = Lusius Fabr .) . Genotype : Formica flava L.
Subgenus Formkina Shuckard ( = Chthonolasius Ruzsky) . Subgenotype: same as the genotype.
. Subgenus Donisthorpea Morice and Durrant ( = Lasius auct) . Subgenotype: Formica nigra L.
Subgenus Dendrolasius Ruzsky.
Subgenotype : Formica fuliginosa Latreille. 1 In Swainson and Shuckard's "On the History and Natural Arrangements of Insects," Longman, Orme, etc., London, 1840.
2Verh. zool. bot. Ges. Wien, 12, 1862, p. 699. 8 Myrmekologische Notinen. Arch. f. Naturg., 79, 1913, pp. 58-63, 3 figs.



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Wheeler-The Ant Genus Lasius and its Subgenera Subgenus Acanthomyops Mayr.
Subgenotype : Lasius claviger Roger.
While discussing Morice and Durrant's work in a recent paper1 Fore1 contends that Acanthomyops Mayr. should replace Lasius Fabr. He therefore cites the genus and its subgenera thus: " Genre Acanthomyops Mayr . (1862).
= Lasius F. 1804 (non Jurine 1801).
= Donisthorpea Morice et Durrant.
Type : claviger Roger.
Subgen. : Chthonolasius Ruzsky .
Type: niger L. (flavus ex Ruzsky).
Subgen. : Dendrolasius Ruzsky .
Type : fuliginosus Latr."
This arrangement seems to me to be inadmissible, first, because Fore1 has no right to change the type of the subgenus Chthonolasius from L. ftavus to L. niger, and second, because these two forms, in my opinion, represent distinct subgenera, Chthonolasius ( =For- micina) being sufficiently characterized by the shape of the maxil- lary palpi of the female and worker, the vestigial eyes of the worker and the hypogseic mode of life. In the two latter characters the species of Chthonolasius resemble those of Acanthomyops and not niger and its allies. As an after-thought, however, Fore1 appends the following postscript: "Mr. Emery m'krit qu'ii son avis il vaudrait mieux prendre pour Lasius le nom nouvellement deterr6 par Wheeler de Formicina Shuck., nom en partie bas6 sur le Lasius flavus. Je n'ai rien ii y opposer, pourvu qu'on finisse une bonne fois avec ces dbmbnagements perpbtuels des anciens noms." I infer, therefore, that he now favors an arrangement like that given above (p. 170) with Formicinaas the genus, but with Donisthorpea eliminated and its species included in the subgenus Formicina. For the present I propose to be conservative and to retain Lasius Fabr., because the status of Panzer's Erlangen list seems to me to be very dubious and because I sympathize with those entomolo- gists who decline to abolish generic names in universal use for more 1 Fourmis du Cogo et d'autres provenances t6colt6es par M. M. Hermann Kohl, Luja, Mayne, etc. Rev. Suisse Zool. 24, 1916. p. 460.



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172 Psyche [December
than half a century. I therefore suggest the following as a satis- factory arrangement of our North American forms of Lasius:l Genus Lasius Fabr.
Subgenus Lasius Fabr. ( = Donisthorpea Morice and Durrant)
niger L. var. sitkahis Pergande.
Var. neoniger Emery.
Subsp. alienus Forster var. americanus Emery. Subgenus Formicina Shuckard ( = Chthonolasius Ruzsky) . flavus L., subsp. nearcticus Wheeler.
Subsp. claripennis Wheeler (in MS.).
brevicornis Emery.
Subsp. microps Wheeler (in MS .) .
umbratus Nylander subsp. subumbratus Viereck. Subsp. mixtus Nyl. var. aphidicola Walsh. Subsp. vestitus Wheeler.
Subsp. speculiventris Emery.
Subsp. minutus Emery.
hum* Wheeler (in MS.)
Subgenus Acanthomyops Mayr .
claviger Roger.
Subsp. subglaber Emery.
interjectus Mayr.
Subsp. mexicanus Wheeler.
Subsp. coloradensis Wheeler (in MS.).
Subsp. arizonicus Wheeler (in MS.).
Subsp. californicus Wheeler (in MS.).
occidentalis Wheeler.
murphyi Forel.
latipes Walsh.
Since the preceding article was sent to the Editor of PSYCHE, I have received from Professor Emery a paper (Formiche d'ltalia nuove o critiche. Rend. R. Accad. Sc. 1st. Bologna 12 Marzo, ^he subgenus Dendrolasius, which should include besides the subgenotype L. fuliginosua, the peculiar Japanese L. spathepus Wheeler, is confined to Eurasia and is therefore omitted.



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