Journal of Threatened Taxa |
www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 February 2021 | 13(2): 17841–17842
ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893
(Print)
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.6501.13.2.17841-17842
#6501 | Received 30 July 2020 | Final
received 19 October 2020 | Finally accepted 20 February 2021
First report of Lipotriches (Rhopalomelissa)
parca (Kohl, 1906) (Halictidae: Nomiinae) from India
Bhaswati Majumder 1 , Anandhan Rameshkumar 2 & Sarfrazul
Islam Kazmi 3
1–3 Zoological Survey of India, Prani Vigyan Bhawan, M-Block, New Alipore, Kolkata, West
Bengal 700053, India.
1 bhaswati94rai@gmail.com, 2 drrameshtrichy@gmail.com (corresponding author), 3 kazmizsi@gmail.com
Editor: Anonymity
requested. Date
of publication: 26 February 2021 (online & print)
Citation:
Majumder, B., A. Rameshkumar & S.I. Kazmi (2021). First report
of Lipotriches (Rhopalomelissa)
parca (Kohl, 1906) (Halictidae: Nomiinae) from India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 13(2): 17841–17842. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.6501.13.2.17841-17842
Copyright: © Majumder et al. 2021. Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction,
and distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to
the author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: Ministry of
Environment, Forest & Climate
Change (MoEF & CC), Zoological
Survey of India.
Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: The authors are thankful to Dr.
Kailash Chandra, Director, Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata for providing
facilities and encouragement. We are
thankful to Dr. Alain Pauly,
Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium, for his continuous
support and valuable suggestions to our studies.
Bees under the subfamily Nomiinae
(Halictidae) are solitary except for a few species that build nests in large
aggregations. These bees are distributed
in the Afrotropical, Oriental, Australian, Palaearctic, and Nearctic regions
except in the Neotropical region (Batra 1966; Michener 2007; Astafurova 2013). Lipotriches Gerstaecker is
one of the largest genera of Nomiinae, known by
roughly 350 species globally and 45 species under six subgenera from India
(Ascher & Pickering 2021). Pauly (2009) studied the Oriental Lipotriches
and provided the key to species with their distributions. Later, Pannure
& Belavadi (2017) reported 11 species from
southern India. The present study is
based on unidentified collections present in the Hymenoptera section,
Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata.
Bees belonging to the genus Lipotriches
were sorted from the unidentified collection and processed with standard
protocols. The specimen was examined and
photographed under a Leica M205A stereo zoom microscope. Species identification was done with the help
of Pauly (2009, 2014, 2020) and Michener (2007). The voucher specimen is deposited in the
National Zoological Collection, Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata, West
Bengal, India.
Family Halictidae Thomson, 1869
Subfamily Nomiinae
Robertson, 1904
Genus Lipotriches Gerstaecker, 1857
Lipotriches (Rhopalomelissa) parca
(Kohl, 1906)
(Image 1)
Nomia parca Kohl, 1906, male, female. Lectotype male: Aden, XII.1898, leg. O.
Simony, NMV, désigné par Pauly,
1990: 165.
Material examined: (Reg. No. 23408/H3), 16.xi.2013,
01 female, India, Rajasthan, Ganganagar, Manjuvas
(29.532N & 73.435E), Sweep net, coll. Gaurav Sharma.
Female description: Length 8mm. Body brownish to dark brown, covered by pubescence; head quadrate (length: width
2.3mm: 2.2mm); vertex, paraocular area, ocello ocular area and vertex finely punctated;
lateral ocelli surrounded by punctation; vertex not
carinate; scape 6× as long as wide; scape, pedicel and F1 brown; F2–9 dorsally
brownish-yellow, ventrally pale yellow; apical segment of antennae pale orange;
face fully covered with grayish bristles; margin of
scutum covered with grayish bristles; mesoscutum densely punctuated; tegula opaque, small, ovate,
brownish; scutellum not obscured by pubescence; felted metanotum;
propodeum with scattered grayish bristles; hind tibia
and hind basitarsus 2.5mm long, with white bristles, with little branching and
tapered; fore wing length 7mm, width 2.2mm; apical lobe strongly smoky; hind
wing length 5mm, width 1.6mm; hyaline; veins brown; metasomal
tergites with dense punctation except T1 which is T1
fairly less punctated.
Distribution:
India: Rajasthan (new record).
Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Libya, Sahara Desert, Sudan, Pakistan, Yemen (Pauly 2014).
Comments: Lipotriches
parca is closely related to L. postcarinata but differs in the following features:
apical lobe of fore wing is strongly smoky; body covered by grey pubescence in L.
parca (vs. fore wing is uniformly infuscate
and without grey pubescence in L. postcarinata). L. parca
is mainly recorded from arid regions from both Africa and Asia, although there
is also one closer checklist record from Pakistan (Ascher & Pickering
2021). The biology and ecology of L.
parca is unknown and requires further study.
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