| | Insects of Britain and Ireland: the bumblebees and cuckoo bees (Bombus and Psithyrus) |
Unless indicated otherwise, the following attributes are implicit throughout the descriptions, except where the characters concerned are inapplicable.
Biology. The adult populations including specialised, sterile females constituting ‘workers’.
Adult morphology. The hair coats of abdomen and thorax conspicuously colour-patterned; not all black anterior to a contrasting abdominal tail. Thorax not predominantly ginger-haired.
Abdomen not ginger haired. The white tail without yellow side patches. Sternite 6 of females without a reflexed spiny process at the tip; without ventro-lateral keels.
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, and distributions of character states within any set of taxa. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2003 onwards. Insects of Britain and Ireland: the bumblebees and cuckoo bees (Bombus and Psithyrus). Version: 27th July 2019. delta-intkey.com’.