An ant‐mimicking ant on an oceanic archipelago: <i>Camponotus guanchus</i> mimics <i>Crematogaster alluaudi</i>—An analogy with the situation of <i>Camponotus lateralis</i> (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Mimicry, that is, the imitation of any unpalatable or defensive species by another, has been of central interest to evolutionary research since Darwin's lifetime. Two ant species, <i>Camponotus guanchus</i> Santschi, 1908 and <i>Crematogaster alluaudi</i> Emery, 1893, endemic to the Canary Islands, occur in two color-morphs: While the head of workers is always reddish and the gaster blackish, the mesosoma (inclusive waist) is either fully reddish or fully blackish. In addition to the obvious morphological and coloration similarities, we provide evidence of mimicry: (i) <i>Ca. guanchus</i> was found only within the area of <i>Cr. alluaudi</i>. (ii) Color morphs are geographically non-randomly distributed: Workers of both species from 16 localities of syntopic occurrences shared in eight cases a blackish and in eight cases a reddish mesosoma. Hence, <i>Ca. guanchus</i> mimics both local color-morphs of <i>Cr. alluaudi</i>. We consider a fascinating analogy with the Mediterranean mimicry system in <i>Camponotus lateralis</i> (Olivier, 1792) and its model species of the <i>Crematogaster scutellaris</i> (Olivier, 1792) group on an island scale. Additionally, we present two endemic bug species, <i>Perenotus stysi</i> (Ribes et al., 2008) and <i>P. malobae</i> Roca-Cusachs & Goula, 2016, as mimics of those <i>Cr. alluaudi</i> workers having a reddish mesosoma. Our distribution, coloration, frequency, and behavioral data as well as the analogy with <i>Ca. lateralis</i> and the <i>Cr. scutellaris</i> group suggest a Batesian-mimicry system in which <i>Ca. guanchus</i>, <i>Perenotus stysi</i>, and <i>P. malobae</i> mimic the unpalatable and aggressive <i>Cr. alluaudi</i> as an antipredator adaptation.