Ants (superfamily Formicoidea)

I had been using the original Naturalists' Handbook by Gary Skinner and Geoffrey Allen published by Pelagic Publishing, and this seemed pretty good, though I had some challenges using it. The plates and drawings were published in 1996 and although the inside cover says the text was published in 2015 this came as a surprise to me - the whole thing feels like it's from the 90s - I'd have been less surprised if it the 2015 had been a reprint date. I'm guessing it was originally published in 1996 and the text was revised to some extent in 2015 but not completely rewritten? In any case, dated or not, it seemed sufficient for me to identify many of the ants I examined. But over time I became increasingly suspicious that I was not getting them right, and found some individuals that I could not identify satisfactorily. A disproportionately large number of flying ants in particular were being identified as less common species. For this reason I am treating my identifications, especially of the flying ants, as provisional - at least until I get more experience under the belt.

I later acquired the more substantial photographic guide to Ants of Britain and Europe by Lebas, Galkowski, Blatrix and Wegnez - this has a lot of really useful information lacking in the earlier guide and is well worth getting, but only has keys for workers. Also it doesn't seem to deal with separating some of the most closely-related species from one another, for example the entire subgenus Chthonolasius is effectively lumped, the individual species within the group just listed so it doesn't tell you how to separate Lasius umbratus from other members of this subgenus.

In early 2025 an update to the Naturalists' Handbook was published by Pelagic. This, by Gary Skinner and Andrew Jarmer is a massive improvement on the earlier version. So far I've only tried it on one ant but I found that many couplets were significantly improved by providing clearer explanations and/or additional characters to check. Having said that, the one ant I've used it on so far (Lasius flavus) still didn't key straighforwardly for me.

Jet Ant Lasius fuliginosus

Yellow Meadow Ant Lasius flavus

Lasius mixtus

Lasius umbratus