myrmepropagandist@futurebird@sauropods.win

Subgenus Dendrolasius ants are NOT Lasius ants IMO because "Lasius" means "fuzzy" and none of them are fuzzy at all.

They are the "shiny fuzzy ants"... this includes Lasius fuliginosus and sister species. However a phylogeny that excluded these ants would also exclude Lasius brunneus... which seems intolerable.

Comparison of phylogenetic hypotheses for Lasius; red indicates paraphyly of Lasius sensu stricto, orange of Lasius (Cautolasius) and violet of Lasius (Chthonolasius). (A) Intuition-based topology from Wilson (1955). (B, C) combined morphological and mitochondrial topologies of Janda et al. (2004), and Maruyama et al. (2008). (D) Consensus topology from the current study; see Table 4 for Bayes factor tests of our constraint analyses.
ALT
Jul 5, 2026, 09:37 UTCen
myrmepropagandist@futurebird@sauropods.win

Replying to @futurebird@sauropods.win

Designating species and understanding living populations of creatures is important for science, but it's also important for ordinary people.

Lasius brunneus could be confused with Lasius niger (the labor day ant) and other common little fuzzy brown ants that people need to interact with talk about and understand.

That the "Jet Ants" (shiny little black ants like Lasius fuliginosus) are more closely related to niger than they are to Lasius brunneus is a little confusing.