Center for Systematic Entomology, Gainesville, Florida

 

Date of this Version

10-14-2022

Citation

Scarpulla EJ. 2022. Lasioglossum (Dialictus) semicaeruleum (Cockerell, 1895) (Hymenoptera: Halictidae) in Maryland: A disjunct population in eastern North America? Insecta Mundi 0958: 1–7.

Comments

Copyright held by the author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons, Attribution Non-Commercial License,

Published on October 14, 2022 by Center for Systematic Entomology, Inc. P.O. Box 141874 Gainesville, FL 32614-1874 USA http://centerforsystematicentomology.org/

Abstract

Since 2004, three specimens of Lasioglossum (Dialictus) semicaeruleum (Cockerell, 1895) (Hyme­noptera: Halictidae) have been collected in Maryland. Other than three specimens from Wisconsin, there are no additional records of this western United States species known east of the Mississippi River. I document the three Maryland records and offer possible scenarios of how the specimens could have arrived in Mary­land.

Lasioglossum (Dialictus) semicaeruleum (Cockerell, 1895) (Hymenoptera: Halictidae) is an abundant western North American species that ranges from the Canadian Prairie Provinces (Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan) through the United States west of the Mississippi River (Arizona, California, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming) and into northern Mexico (Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Nuevo León, and Sonora) (Gibbs 2010; Ascher and Pickering 2022; GBIF 2022; Fig. 1). Gibbs (2010) noted two enigmatic Maryland specimens: USGS_DRO029678, Bowie, Prince George’s County, and USGS_DRO141684, Wittman, Talbot County (Fig. 2–3) and cautioned that these might be mislabeled. In 2015, a bee survey of the Paul S. Sarbanes Ecosystem Restoration Project at Poplar Island (hereafter Poplar Island), Chesapeake Bay, Talbot County, yielded a third Maryland specimen: USGS_DRO556278 (Fig.2).

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