Abstract
The distance from southern Italy to Denmark is about the same as the length of Finland from south to north. A study of the biogeography of insects, such as ants, would take a lot of effort and funding to sample the whole area. Here, a citizen science approach is used to obtain distribution records for mound-building Formica ants in Finland. This resulted in samples from 2,434 ant nests, of which 2,363 were for nests of the target species group. The data obtained helps define the northern limits of the species in Finland and resulted in three new records for F. suecica Adlerz, 1902, which is a red-listed species in Finland. In addition, as a by-catch, a new imported species dispersed in a peculiar way was recorded in Finland: Lasius emarginatus (Olivier, 1792). Volunteer citizens are potential research assistants in the science of entomology.
Highlights
The mound-building Formica ants are important key species in their environment
The project received samples from 2,434 nests and a total 30,674 specimens of ants
The citizen science approach was successful in this study of mound-building Formica ants, as a high number of samples was received and with a very low budget
Summary
The mound-building Formica ants are important key species in their environment. They are effective predators and have a role in nutrient recycling (e.g., reviews in Robinson et al, 2016 and Frouz et al, 2016). Mound-building Formica ants make nest mounds or cover their nests with organic material, mainly needles, small twigs and leaves of shrubs. The distributions of these ants in Finland were studied earlier by Baroni Urbani & Collingwood (1977) and Collingwood (1979) using geographical and administrative units. The species distributions in four Finish large-scale ecoregions; in addition, the NFI10 data exclude northern Finnish Lapland (approximately 1/5 of Finland), leaving one of the most interesting geographic areas unstudied. The NFI10 sampling targeted forest and forested mire plots, leaving other environments unstudied, missing the main habitats for some mound-building species, e.g., the meadow-dwelling Formica pressilabris Nylander, 1846
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