I caught nine Camponotus queens in central Utah on Saturday on a hillside in a pinyon pine biome, and I thought I had correctly identified them as Camponotus vicinus, but as I look at them closer I'm actually not sure anymore. I have the hardest time telling apart vicinus and sansabeanus sometimes...
In my experience, vicinus queens tend to be bigger and their coloration a little more orange than golden. Most people seem to identify vicinus by their more narrow triangle head, flattened scapes, and thorax with some coloration, as opposed to sansabeanus which has an all black thorax, and a head wider than their thorax. It usually is obvious once workers arrive though as the vicinus workers have a red thorax, and the sansabeanus are all yellow/golden.
However there seems to be quite the color variation between some of these queens. I've heard that Camponotus sansabeanus can have a dark morph, but I think the ones I caught and have been keeping from two years ago are the light morph.
There also appears to be a thread on this exact topic already (https://www.formicul...us-red-variety/) but after consulting it I still don't feel like I can tell 100% but I'm leaning more towards sansabeanus now instead of vicinus. Hopefully we can lay this to rest with this thread.
First is my for sure Camponotus sansabeanus queen that I have had for 2+ years now.
Second, this is one of the queens I caught. Comparing with my older sansabeanus from the first picture I'm almost positive this is a sansabeanus.
But this one has a much darker coloration and was found in the same area. Is this the dark morph of sansabeanus, or is this a vicinus? The coloration makes me think vicinus, but the head seems too big and the size makes me think sansabeanus.
I'm going to guess they're all sansabeanus and there is just quite a range in how much yellow to black ratio their abdomen can be.
