ColletidaeAmphylaeus obscuriceps Hylaeus spp – Masked Bee Callomelitta antipodes Leioproctus Neopasiphae mirabilis Paracolletes crassipes Paracolletes nigrocinctus Trichocolletes
Photographs © Gary Taylor
I thought I’d come across something totally new for my albums when I first spotted this one a few days back… Nah, just a Lasioglossum (Parasphecodes) I think. The biggest and fluffiest Parasphecodes I’ve ever seen, and a male, so still new for the albums, just not quite the buzz you get with finding something new and rare 😃…
However, having said that, while doing a bit of research through PaDIL, it struck me that this one looks very similar to one described by Ken Walker in 2010 and is simply known as Parasphecodes UM3, female unknown… so dunno, might still be something cool… 🙂
Author Gary Taylor, Geraldton, Midwest WA
A PaDIL search shows these to be Paracolletes (Anthoglossa) nigrocinctus (which in Latin is “black belts”). The pics (above) is the male Colletid bee… I was dying to know what the female looked like, so I went back to find her…
Took a couple of days to bee sure (well, 99.9%) but that’s her in the 2nd and 3rd pics. Yes, I was expecting her to have had a bit more colour too… There were plenty of these grey girls around but I wasn’t actually paying much attention to them ‘cos I was looking for something with a bit more “Wow!” to it 😄 Anyway, well into the 2nd day, disappointed that I still hadn’t seen the female, a male turned up as I was taking these pics and insisted that she actually was the female I’d been looking for all along 😆 And put up side by side they do have some striking similarities.
Author Gary Taylor
The two pics below are massively cropped. They show the vein/cell structure (male top pic, female below) as being fairly identical. Not sure if it’s enough to distinguish between species but added to the other evidence I’m pretty sure they are a matching pair 🙂
Author Gary Taylor
- Scientific classification
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Arthropoda
- Class: Insecta
- Informal: Pterygotes
- Order: Hymenoptera
- Superfamily: Apoidea
- Informal: Apiformes
- Family: Colletidae
- Subfamily: Colletinae
- Genus: Paracolletes
- Subgenus: infrageneric Anthoglossa
- Species: Paracolletes (Anthoglossa) nigrocinctus
Footnote & References
- Photographs Paracolletes (Anthoglossa) nigrocinctus, Midwest WA © Gary Taylor
- Paracolletes nigrocinctus Cockerell, 1914, GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility, https://www.gbif.org/species/1350307
- Observations on flower visits of Anthoglossa cf. callander (COCKERELL, 1915) and A. nigrocincta (COCKERELL, 1914) in Western Australia (Hymenoptera, Colletidae, Paracolletinae), Bernahard Jacobi, ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305652626_Observations_on_flower_visits_of_Anthoglossa_cf_callander_COCKERELL_1915_and_A_nigrocincta_COCKERELL_1914_in_Western_Australia_Hymenoptera_Colletidae_Paracolletinae
ColletidaeAmphylaeus obscuriceps Hylaeus spp – Masked Bee Callomelitta antipodes Leioproctus Neopasiphae mirabilis Paracolletes crassipes Paracolletes nigrocinctus Trichocolletes
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