Center for Systematic Entomology, Gainesville, Florida

 

Date of this Version

4-27-2023

Citation

Hesler LS, Beckendorf EA, Martens AP, Johnson PJ. 2023. A new state record of Eucera (Xenoglossa) kansensis (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in South Dakota, USA. Insecta Mundi 0985: 1–6.

Comments

Published on April 28, 2023 by Center for Systematic Entomology, Inc. P.O. Box 141874 Gainesville, FL 32614-1874 USA http://centerforsystematicentomology.org/

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons, Attribution Non-Commercial License,

Abstract

Eucera (Xenoglossa) kansensis (Cockerell, 1905) (Hymenoptera: Apidae) is newly recorded for the state of South Dakota, USA. The bees were sampled predominantly with blue vane traps, and E. kansensis was associated with a wide range of habitats that did not include its primary floral resources of Cucurbita L. and Ipomoea L. Further study is warranted to determine the basis for the association of E. kansensis within the wide range of habitats in this study.

The longhorn bee tribe Eucerini (Hymenoptera: Apidae) is a widespread and diverse group of solitary bees that includes important pollinators of both wild and agricultural plants (Dorchin et al. 2018). Based on revised phylo­genetic analyses, several members of the tribe were recently reduced to subgeneric rank within the genus Eucera (Dorchin et al. 2018). One of the groups subsumed into Eucera was the large squash bees of the genus Xenoglossa, now treated as a subgenus, which consists of oligoleges that collect pollen from the flowers of Cucurbita L. and Ipomoea L. (Hurd et al. 1971; Fowler 2020). Eucera (Xenoglossa) is morphologically distinct from congenerics by having a small tooth on the inner basal margin of each mandible (Hurd and Linsley 1964; Ascher and Pickering 2022).

Eucera (Xenoglossa) consist of seven species distributed from Central America to the northern regions of the United States of America (USA) (Michener 2007). Two species, E. strenua (Cresson, 1878) and E. kansensis (Linnaeus, 1763), are distributed throughout much of the USA (Ascher and Pickering 2022). In this paper, we add a state new record for South Dakota to the known geographic distribution of E. kansensis (Fig. 1) within the country..

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