1. IntroductionTurkey, located between Europe and Asia covers a relatively large surface area and is an important country in terms of the biodiversity it harbors. The importance of the country comes from its geopraphical location which makes the south easternmost part of Europe and westernmost part of Asia. This caused to take chance to understand of some continental endemic species and populations situations as well to find many common species for both continental in same country Turkey.
Ants constitute a very predominant insect group on the world and Turkey is one of the species richest country in the region with 377 known taxa (Santschi, 1926; Collingwood et al., 2011; Ghahari and Collingwood, 2013; Heinze et al., 2015; Dubovikoff and Yusupov, 2017; Salata and Borowiec, 2019; Salata et al., 2019; Kiran and Karaman, 2020; Seifert, 2020a) followed by Greece (315 taxa) (Salata and Borowiec, 2018) and Iran (248 taxa) (Rad et al., 2018; Khalili-Moghadam et al., 2019). Although the high number of ant taxa in Turkey can be regarded as to be related with the larger surface area of the country, Turkey is accepted as speciation center for many ant species, especially cryptic ones. However, studies for determining the ant fauna of Turkey is far from to be complete. Only the western part of country has been studied partly in detail, and knowledge of ant fauna of central and eastern parts are limited (Kiran and Karaman, 2020).
Central Anatolia Region is the second largest region in Turkey with its surface area of 151,000 km2, making
19% of the country (Atalay and Mortan, 2008). However, this region was the second less ant species known area (108 species) after Southeast Anatolian Region of Turkey (62 species). Although some faunistic studies have been carried out in Central Anatolia Region, none of them aimed to reveal ant fauna of the region as a whole. On the other hand, Central Anatolia Region of Turkey is an important region of in the country with the steppic and antropogenic steppic areas included. Steppic areas are located in the middle of the region around Salt Lake with 900 m altitude and Konya lowland with 1000 m altitude (Atalay and Mortan, 2008). The highest point is 3917 m Erciyes Mt. and the average altitude is 1205 m (Elibüyük and Yılmaz, 2010). This rich geographic composition and its geographic location give inevitably opportunity of suitable environments for settlements of ants.
In this study we aimed to determine the ant fauna of Central Anatolia Region of Turkey.
2. Materials and methodsSpecimens were collected by hand sampling and pitfall traps in 24 habitats in 383 different localities in Central Anatolia Region during 2001–2016. The altitudes of the sampling locations ranged from 322 to 2863 m (Table 1, Figure 1).
The pictures of the sampled material were taken using Nikon D800e camera attached to 3.2× and 8× microscope objectives. Pictures were stacked using the Helicon Focus software (Helicon Soft Ltd., Kharkiv
Abstract: The Central Anatolian part of Turkey was investigated with the aim of determining its Formicidae fauna. Specimens were collected by hand sampling and pitfall traps in 24 habitats in 383 different localities in Central Anatolia Region during 2001–2016. As a result, 137 species belonging to 34 genera were determined. Messor incorruptus Kuznetsov-Ugamsky, 1929 and Ponera testacea Emery, 1895 are new records for Turkish ant fauna. We excluded four species, Camponotus sylvaticus (Oliver, 1792), Messor meridionalis (André, 1883), Proformica striaticeps (Forel, 1911) and Tapinoma nigerrimum (Nylander, 1856), from Turkish ant fauna due to recent taxonomic data and distribution pattern. With these records and exclusions ant fauna of Turkey is updated from 377 to 375.
Key words: Formicidae, ants, Central Anatolia, Turkey
Received: 10.08.2020 Accepted/Published Online: 13.03.2021 Final Version: 21.05.2021
Research Article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
1 Shorthouse D (2010). SimpleMappr, an online tool to produce publication-quality point maps [online]. Website http://www.simplemappr.net [accessed 28 January 2020].
Comments: Tapinoma festae Emery, 1925 and their sister species T. subboreale Seifert, 2012 are morphologically very similar species co-occurred in Mediterranean basin. Borowiec and Salata (2012) stated that in the eastern part of the Mediterranean basin T. subboreale is very rare, and it is replaced by T. festae in Aegean and Anatolian regions. Their workers and gynes extremely share similar morphological characters and only separated by male genitalia. Because collected material consists of only 15 workers without males, we left this material as Tapinoma cf. festae.
distinguishable only in details of structure of male genitalia and true T. erraticum is common only in northern parts of the Balkan Peninsula. The investigation of Greek material showed that in this country occurs only T. cf. eraticum BALC. This Balkanian species has northern border of range in Balkan Peninsula in Slovenia thus its occurrence in Turkey is highly probable (Lech Borowiec; personal communication). Thus we gave our material as Tapinoma cf. erraticum before B. Seifert clarifies the status of Tapinoma sp. BALC.
Comments: Although Seifert (1992) separated former L. alienus into 3 species (L. alineus, L. paralienus Seifert and L. psammophilus Seifert), even he revised the L. paralienus species complex and delimited L. paralienus in North Europe to Sweden and L. bombycina Seifert & Galkowski from south-east Cental Europe, Balkans and Turkey (Seifert and Galkowski, 2016). Recently Seifert concers 9 species alienus, paralienus, bombycina, casevitzi, kritikos, obscuratus, psammophilus, piliferus, and creticus in the alienus species complex in his revision (Seifert, 2020). Although Turkish L. alienus material still included several morphospecies, material given here consist only true L. alienus samples. In this manner Turkish Lasius alienus species complex need revision according to recent studies.
Lasius balcanicus/distinguendusMaterial: 19, 47, 131, 364, 376.Comments: Workers of both species are very similar,
definitive identification is only possible based on queen caste (Seifert, 2007). We left the identication of the material as Lasius balcanicus/distinguendus for now because of the lack of the queen caste.
Lasius fuliginosus (Latreille, 1798)Material: 283.Lasius illyricus Zimmerman, 1935Material: 335.Comments: Zimmermann (1935) described L.
illyricus from Crotia. Until Borowiec and Salata (2013) indication as bona species it synonymized to L. alienus and L. emarginatus (Oliver) along long years. Recently L. illyricus recorded from Turkey from very large areas (Kiran and Karaman, 2020). On the other hand, we surprisingly found only one locality that located quite north of study area and characterized by very old (more than 100 years) Pinus sylvestris L. forest with some small Quercus L. bush and Juniperus L. It means L. illyricus not prefer to live in xerophylic areas in Central Anatolia.
Comments: Plagiolepis atlantis is given as a senior synonym of Plagiolepis perperamus Salata, Borowiec & Radchenko, 2018 previously recorded species in Turkey, by Seifert (2020b).
336, 351, 363, 377, 383.Comments: This species was known rare and endemic
species in Turkey, until Iranian record was published (Moradloo et al., 2015). Moreover our study revealed that this species is not so rare in Turkey. But our material showed two distinct morphospecies. While south populations are typical A. holtzi, they are replaced by other morphospecies towards the north of study area. Aphaenogaster holtzi was generally concolourous yellowish species. On the other hand, specimens from northern populations have brownish colour with brown mesosoma, darker head and gaster. Morover its queens also differ from typical gueens of A. holtzi by striated body and black scutellum.
Aphaenogaster maculifrons Kiran and Aktaç, 2008Material: 202, 213, 214, 224, 225, 228, 232, 249.Comments: This endemic species is described from
Sultan Mountains which included the research area with its eastern slopes. This species belongs to A. subterranea species group and most resemble the A. subterranea (Latreille) in this group. In the research area, there are three of the members of this species group: A. holtzi, A. subterranea and A. maculifrons. In south of the research area, there are only two species from this group A. holtzi and A. maculifrons. On the other hand, towards to north after 39°N A. maculifrons leave its existence to A. subterranea. It means northern distribution of A. maculifrons in Turkey limited up the 39°N, the same thing goes for the southern distribution of A. subterranea below to this longitude in Turkey.
Aphaenogaster subterranea (Latreille, 1798)Material: 92, 110, 113, 114, 124, 132.Comments: See the comments on A. maculifrons.Aphaenogaster subterraneoides Emery, 1881Material: 94, 96, 100, 128, 247.Genus: Cardiocondyla Emery, 1869Cardiocondyla bulgarica Forel, 1892Material: 42, 49, 118,138, 149, 186, 194.Cardiocondyla sahlbergi Forel, 1913
Comments: Seifert (2016) divided the hyper-diverse species P. pallidula (Nylander) to four species recently: North African P. cicatricosa Stitz, 1917, and Euroasian three other species P. pallidula, P. balcanica Seifert, 2016 and P. koshewnikovi Ruzsky, 1905. Since there exist no morphological differences between species of the P. pallidula complex, except for NUMOBAT (numeric morphology-based alpha-taxonomy), we gave our specimens as P. cf. pallidula at the moment. According to the distribution data noted in Seifert’s (2016) paper Anatolian populations should belong to P. koshewnikovi Ruzsky, 1905.
Comments: Galkowski et al. (2010) indicated in their paper on redescription of S. fugax (Latreille, 1798) that S. fugax species group distributed in Europe and Mediterranean region comprises four distinct species and they propose to study on this species group in the future. Bračko et al. (2016) mentioned that in Greece S. fugax is less common than S. cf. lusitanica which dominated lowland and warm areas in the country. On the other hand, both species complexes have several taxa of uncertain status (Bračko et al., 2016). Therefore, the material is given here as common to both taxa complexes until taxonomical chaos solved.
is characterised by straight occipital margin of head. This species complex represented by 7 taxa (S. alpinus Wheeler, 1909, S. christophi Emery, 1889, S. huberi, S. huberi subsp. dalmaticus Baroni Urbani, 1969, S. kervillei Santschi, 1921, S. rehbinderi Forel, 1904 and S. silvestrii Menozzi, 1936). It appears that this record given here represented easternmost record according to distributional pattern of S. huberi. Although the studied material well distinguished within the species complex, this species complex required revison based on genetic aspect at least in Turkey.
Temnothorax dessyi (Menozzi, 1936)Material: 100, 200, 228.Temnothorax exilis (Emery, 1869)Material: 6.Comments: Status of eastern populations of
Temnothorax exilis requires further study because in great probability this is a complex of cryptic species. Borowiec & Salata (2018) noted that in Greece occur at least 7 morphospecies of this complex, most of them are concentrated in the Aegean region. Clarification of the taxonomic status of these morphospecies requires detailed morphometric and genetic studies. Perhaps populations from Anatolia will turn out to be a separate species from this complex, so keeping the name T. exilis for them should be considered as temporary.
Comments: Although serious studies have been undertaken to solve the taxonomic problems of Tetramorium caespitum species group in recent years (Csősz et al., 2014; Steiner, Schlick-Steiner, and Moder, 2006; Wagner et al., 2017), these breakthroughs have generally focused on their species in Europe. We found at least 4 undescribed species that related strongly with T. caespitum (Linnaeus) in the study area. No any morphometric based key suitable for Turkish T. caespitum species group for now.
Comments: Although the type locality of T. chefketi is in our study area (Ankara), this species contains some undescribed species (Bernard Seifert; personal communication).
374, 379.Comments: Although the type locality (Syria) of
T. lucidulum Menozzi, 1933 is near the studied area the material shows some differentiation when we compare with the type in Antweb CASENT0904824. Frons is not as extremely narrow and frontal carinae not as distinctly curved as in like the type of T. lucidulum. Moreover, L. Borowiec stated that all European materials collections identified as T. lucidulum (including Greek material) are misidentified and probably belong to undescribed taxon or taxa (Lech Borowiec; personal communication). The final status will be clarified after the revision of T. semilaeve species complex.
1835Genus: Ponera Latreille, 1804Ponera coarctata (Latreille, 1802)Material: 58, 88.Ponera testacea Emery, 1895 (Figure 3)Material: 77, 79, 80, 84, 88, 118, 140, 157, 161, 182.Comments: This species was a junior synonym of the
mediterranean large distributed sister species P. coarctata, until Csősz and Seifert (2003) raised it to species level. They indicated the distribution of the species as Austria, Bulgaria, Crotia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Serbia, Spain and Switzerland (Borowiec, 2014). After this record, its distribution enlarges almost its sister species. Some records came from North Africa (Taheri and Reyes-López, 2015) and Greece (Bračko et al., 2016). Now with this study the distribution of the species continues to enlarge towards east.
4. DiscussionIn this study, 137 ant species belonging to 34 genera and 6 subfamilies were recorded from Central Anatolia Region of Turkey. Fifty-six species are new records for the area and two of them Messor incorruptus and Ponera testacea are new records for Turkish ant fauna (Table 2). Twenty-seven species of the formerly known species from Central Anatolia Region were not been recorded. Thus, the total known species from the Central Anatolia Region is raised 108 to 164, ant fauna of Turkey 377 to 375 in final. The study results show us important distributional, faunistical, ecological and zoogeographical results, beside the new species records for Turkish ant fauna.
Aenictus and Dorylus Fabricius are the only members of army ants in Palearctic region. Their species was recorded from south of Turkey (Donisthorpe, 1950b; Aktaç et al., 2004). There is no further record about the existence of any Dorylus species from Turkey after Donisthorpe (1950b). After first and the only record of Aenictus rhodiensis from Adana-Pozantı (Aktaç et al., 2004), our record is the
second record for this species. Workers were collected from a meadow area just in the entry of an oak forest. But the finding place of the record is nearly the most northern part of the study area, meaning that this tropic species has formerly been distributed nearly in whole Anatolia and now the distribution turned to rare possibly because of climatic changes.
Aphaenogaster s. str. (striated gaster) members are distributed in the whole mediterranean region from Portugal to Turkey. The easternmost border in Turkey is 31°E longitude. This border is consisting of Sultan Mountains, which is the western border of Central Anatolia Region. Aphaenogaster balcanica (Emery), as a member of Aphaenogaster s. str., was recorded from Sultan Mountains as its easternmost distribution (Karaman et al., 2017). The current study proved its absence in the Central Anatolia Region and to east. The possible cause of limitations eastern distribution of this species complex needs further ecological studies.
We removed four species previously recorded species Camponotus sylvaticus (Olivier, 1792), Messor meridionalis (André, 1883), Proformica striaticeps (Forel, 1911) and Tapinoma nigerrimum (Nylander, 1856) from the research area in Turkish ant fauna because of their distributional pattern.
Camponotus sylvaticus was recorded only three times from Turkey independently. Emery (1897) recorded the species firstly from Bilecik in 1897. Later, Donisthorpe (1950a) gave the second record of the species from İstanbul and Ankara (first and the only Central Anatolian record) and then Baroni Urbani and Aktaç (1981) gave the third record of the species from Denizli. Borowiec (2014) restricted the species distribution in western part of the Mediterranean subregion and noted previously records from Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece and Turkey probably as misidentifications. We agree with Borowiec, because C. sylvaticus could be confused with pale C. oertzeni and/or C. praegracilis described recently. According to this information we excluded C. sylvaticus from Central Anatolian ant fauna and also from the Turkish ant fauna.
Messor meridionalis was recorded in the study area and many more localities in Turkey by various researchers. On the other hand, Borowiec (2014) indicated that M. meridionalis is a species dubium, and its type series refers to more than one species and needs lectotype designation. Because Borowiec categorized this species as incertae sedis finaly, we removed this species from the list of Central Anatolian ant fauna and suggested to remove even Turkish ant fauna.
Proformica striaticeps, previously recorded in the region, is a doubtful record. This species is characterized by sparse hairs on second abdomen tergit, clypeus not only dot sculpture but also with longitudinal sculpture,
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and dorsum of occipital border of head and dorsum of mesosoma without erect hairs. On the other hand, all our P. striaticeps like specimens do not have any long erect hairs on occipital border of head and dorsum of mesosoma. Members of the genus Proformica have a very low dispersal power, due to apterous or reduced winged queens and this situation cause strong convergence between the morphology of the workers of the more or less related species. Determination is stronger if it is possible to compare males and queens. Therefore, we give the P. striaticeps as a previous record and refuse to give the undetermined specimens as Proformica sp. here until collecting the sexuals (Christophe Galkowski, personal communication).
Tapinoma nigerrimum was also recorded in the research area in the begining of the 20th centuary (Kohl, 1905). After this record, few records were given from different part of Turkey (Aras and Aktaç, 1990). But Seifert et al. (2017) stated that this species distributed in the West and Central Mediterranean parts of Europe and Africa, but absent in Balkans and Asia Minor. Therefore T. nigerriumum is excluded from the Central Anatolian ant fauna list and suggested to remove the Turkish ant fauna.
Some collected material is still undetermined using current literature and keys. Although Seifert (2016) and Wagner et al. (2017) recently prepared keys for former Westpalearctic Pheidole pallidula and Tetramorium caespitum complex, respectively, it is not possible to follow these keys with suitable equipment easily. Moreover, because T. caespitum complex keys were prepared mainly for European specimens, these keys do not work on the Turkish T. caespitum complex specimens in high incidence. Therefore, one can easily imagine that the species number in real is more then declared here.
Although Turkey is a country with many studies made on its ant fauna, which is quite rich, the ant fauna of the country is quite far from complete. The best known region of Turkey in terms of ant fauna is the second small region, Marmara region which covers only 8.5% percent of the country, but is represented with 199 ant species (Table 3). This means that, besides several different habitat types such as maqui, deciduous forests, pine forest, low and highlands, refigium areas (Uludağ Mt.) all providing different climatic microcharacteristis are contained in this region, it is also subjected to many strong faunal studies to reveal some part of species diversity of the region: Samanlı Mts. (Kiran and Aktaç, 2006), Strandzha Mt. (Lapeva-Gjonova and Kiran, 2012), Turkish Thrace (Agosti and Collingwood, 1987; Çamlıtepe and Aktaç, 1987; Aras and Aktaç, 1990), Uludağ Mt. (Donisthorpe, 1950a) etc.
Until this current study, there exists no detailed study performed only on one large area within a region of Turkey, except the Eastern Anatolia Region studied by Aktaç (1988). He studied Eastern Anatolian Region vertically and determined only 45 species (Aktaç, 1988). However, this number is far from to represent the expected species richness in the region with diverse habitat types present. Moreover, the number of species in ant fauna of the region was raised to 115 (Table 3) after his study with some small taxonomical studies (Karaman and Aktaç, 2013; Csősz et al., 2015; Seifert and Galkowski, 2016; Salata et al., 2018, etc.) and a recently published study of Kiran and Karaman (2020) (14 new species record from Eastern Anatolia Region).
The current study is the first and comprehensive faunal study performed on a big geographic region of Turkey. With this study, the number of species of ant fauna of the Central Anatolia Region is increased from 108 to 164 (Table 2). This result carries the ant fauna of Central Anatolia to the
Figure 3. Worker of Ponera testacea. A. Head from frontal view; B. whole body from lateral view (scales 0.5 mm)
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Table 2. Species list of Central Anatolia region of Turkey (bold species are previously known species that are not recorded in this study, * new records for research area, ** new records for Turkish ant fauna).
Species Zoogeographic element Bioregion
1 Aenictus rhodiensis* East Mediterranean Mediterranean2 Anergates atratulus Eurosiberian Palearctic3 Aphaenogaster aktaci* Endemic-Turkish-Aegaean Island Endemic4 Aphaenogaster holtzi Southwest Asiatic Palearctic5 Aphaenogaster maculifrons Endemic-Turkish Endemic6 Aphaenogaster subterranea Mediterranean Mediterranean7 Aphaenogaster subterraneoides* Mediterranean Mediterranean8 Bothriomyrmex communista* South-European European9 Camponotus aegaeus* Endemic-Balkano-Anatolian Endemic10 Camponotus aethiops Centralasiatic-Europo-Mediterranean Palearctic11 Camponotus atricolor East European European12 Camponotus baldaccii East Mediterranean Mediterranean13 Camponotus boghossiani* Endemic-Balkano-Anatolian Endemic14 Camponotus candiotes Balkano-Caucasian Endemic15 Camponotus fallax* Eurosiberian Palearctic16 Camponotus gestroi* Southwest Asiatic-Mediterranean Palearctic17 Camponotus hirtus Endemic-Turkish Endemic18 Camponotus ionius Balkano-Anatolian Endemic19 Camponotus lateralis Turano-Europeo-Mediterranean Palearctic20 Camponotus libanicus* East Mediterranean Mediterranean21 Camponotus oertzeni Balkano-Turanian Palearctic22 Camponotus piceus Centralasiatic-European Palearctic23 Camponotus praegracilis Endemic-Turkish Endemic24 Camponotus samius* Endemic-Balkano-Anatolian Endemic25 Camponotus sanctus Balkano-Southwest Asiatic Palearctic26 Camponotus universitatis North Mediterranean Mediterranean27 Camponotus vagus Eurosiberian Palearctic28 Cardiocondyla bulgarica* Endemic-Balkano-Anatolian Endemic29 Cardiocondyla elegans Centralasiatic-European Palearctic30 Cardiocondyla mauritanica Cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan31 Cardiocondyla sahlbergi Southwest and Centralasiatic Palearctic32 Cardiocondyla stambuloffii Ponto-Caucasian Palearctic33 Cataglyphis aenescens Centralasiatic-East European Palearctic34 Cataglyphis albicans North African-Arabian-Southwest Asiatic Palearctic35 Cataglyphis frigida Southwest Asiatic Palearctic36 Cataglyphis laevior* North African-Arabian-Southwest Asiatic Palearctic37 Cataglyphis machmal Endemic-Armeno-Anatolian Endemic38 Cataglyphis nodus East Mediterranean-Southwest Asiatic Palearctic39 Cataglyphis viaticoides Southwest Asiatic Palearctic40 Colobopsis truncata* Turano-Europeo-Mediterranean Palearctic41 Crematogaster gullukdagensis Endemic-Turkish Endemic
Tetramorium cf. caespitum152 Tetramorium chefketi Centralasiatic-East European Palearctic153 Tetramorium diomedeum Northeast Mediterranean Mediterranean154 Tetramorium ferox Central and Southwest Asiatic-Eastern European Palearctic155 Tetramorium feroxoide Turanian Palearctic156 Tetramorium flavidulum Endemic-Balkano-Anatolian Endemic157 Tetramorium galaticum Endemic-Turkish Endemic158 Tetramorium hippocratis* Balkano-Southwest Asiatic Palearctic
Table 2. (Continued).
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Species Zoogeographic element Bioregion
159 Tetramorium hungaricum* East European European160 Tetramorium lucidulum East Mediterranean Mediterranean
Tetramorium cf. lucidulum161 Tetramorium moravicum Central and East European European162 Tetramorium punicum Mediterranean Mediterranean163 Tetramorium rhodium* Endemic-Balkano-Anatolian Endemic164 Trichomyrmex perplexus* Balkano-Southwest Asiatic Palearctic
Table 2. (Continued).
second place in Turkey after Marmara Region (Table 3). We have great expectations to find many new and/or rare species with future detailed studies in other regions of the country, which we belive that will reveal the ant fauna of related regions and Turkey.
The ant fauna of Central Anatolia Region is quite rich, comprising 44% of total number of Turkish ant fauna.
Turkey belongs to the West Palearctic Region and geographically situated at intersection point of three continents (Asia, Africa and Europe). This situation caused the faunas to be affected from different zoogeographic elements. From this point of view, the ant fauna of our study area showed us that it was mainly affected from Palearctic fauna (sensu lato) by 50%. The second and the most interesting result is that the ant fauna of Central Anatolia shows very high endemism by 22.84% including Turkish and adjacent region endemics. Mediterranean and European elements represent 14.81 and 8.64%, respectively (Table 4).
Inside of the Palearctic elements Centralasiatic-European and Eurosibirian elements are the leading ones with 9.15 and 7.93%, respectively (Table 4). When the position of the Turkey is considered in the West Palearctic, domination of Asiatic and European elements in Turkey
can be expected. Most parts of Turkey are situated in Asia continent (Anatolia), and one part in Europe continent (Thrace part of Turkey). The northern part of Turkey belongs to Eurosibirian Region and the immigration routes of the siberian fauna elements to the Central Anatolia Region were Thrace in the west and Kars-Erzurum Plateu in the east (De Lattin, 1967; Demirsoy, 1996).
Endemic ant fauna of the region is very high. 15 species (9.15%) are Turkish endemic and 12 species (7.32%) are Balkano-Anatolian endemic (Table 4). Central Anatolia region is surrounded by many geographic barriers: Western Anatolian Mountains in west, the Black Sea Mountains in north, the Anatolian Diagonal in east and the Taurus Mountains in south (Kosswig, 1955). This isolated area produces high endemism.
Turkey belongs to the Mediterranean region by its western and southern costal areas (Taglianti et al., 1999). Therefore, areas such as Central Anatolia Region are less affected by the Mediterranean elements, because of existence of two barriers, the West Anatolian Mountains in west and the Taurus Mountains in the south.
European elements are mainly consisting of boreal and forest species and therefore they are less represented in the Central Anatolia Region due to its vegetation types.
Table 3. Regions of Turkey, approximate surface areas with their percentages in total cover and the recorded species numbers (Atalay and Mortan 2008, Kiran and Karaman 2020). * previous records, ** new records for Central Anatolia.
Regions of Turkey Surface area (km2) Percentage % Species Number
Central and East European 1 0.61%Central and Southeast European 1 0.61%Central European-Balkano-Anatolian 4 2.44%East European 3 1.83%European 4 2.44%South-European 1 0.61%
AcknowledgmentWe would like to thank Yılmaz Çamlıtepe (Edirne, Turkey) for his assistance in the project and Volkan Aksoy (Edirne, Turkey) for his huge efforts in the field and ant
preparations. This study was financially supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) Project No: 109T088 and partly 111T811.
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