PRELIMINARY RESEARCH ON SOME MORPHOMETRIC CHARACTERISTICS OF EUROPEAN RED WOOD ANTS (FORMICA PRATENSIS RETZIUS, 1783) ALONG THE TURKEY-BULGARIA CROSS-BORDER AREA

Formica pratensis Retzius, 1783 (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) is one of the members of the wood ants group and is represented in Europe with the hairy N morph common in the south and the less hairy P morph common in the north. The species is naturally distributed in European part of Turkey (Thrace Region) and in the neighboring parts of Bulgaria. Former studies of Bernhard Seifert showed that the N morph is the dominant morph in south Bulgaria, but the situation in Turkey is not known. In the present study, we sampled workers from some colonies of F. pratensis in Turkey and Bulgaria and obtained a pilosity data for each colony in the two countries. The comparison of our data with that of Seifert showed that the Bulgaria samples well fit with the pilosity data of P morph and Turkey samples were apparently less hairy but hairs are longer than all other populations. The results helped us to show that F. pratensis can have ecomorphological traits other than that fitting the definition of N and P morphs and that traits may differ from one to another population distributed even along in a small scale of area.