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| Insects of Britain and Ireland: the families of Hymenoptera |
Mining Bees.
Adults medium sized to large; 9–16 mm long; very hairy; with branched or feathery hairs on the body. Solitary insects.
Head. Antennal segments (10–)12 (females), or (10–)13 (males). The terminal antennal segment truncate. Tongue shorter than the prementum; pointed. Labial palps with all the segments similar in length and subcylindrical. Mentum and submentum present.
Thorax. Pronotum more or less straight at the back; short, not extending back to the tegulae. Cenchri absent. Wings present. Fore-wings with the venation well developed. Closed fore-wing cells 6–10. Submarginal cells 2, or 3. Discoidal cells 2. The basal forewing vein (BV) straightish. Hind-wings with closed cells. Hind femur without a well defined trochantellus. Hind tibiae with spurs specialised for a cleaning rôle. Hind basitarsi wider than the other segments.
Abdomen. The abdomen with a marked basal constriction; short-waisted. The ‘waist’ simple. Visible abdominal segments 6 (females), or 7 (males). The gaster concolorous, or colour-patterned; when concolorous, black-and-white or -greyish, black-and-yellow, or black-and-brown or -reddish. Ovipositor of females not visibly protruding; modified as a retractable sting.
Larvae. Larvae legless or the legs vestigial; feeding on material manufactured by the adults (?).
British representation. Species in Britain 6; Dasypoda, Macropis, Melitta.
Classification. Suborder Apocrita; Series Aculeata; Superfamily Apoidea.
Illustrations. • Dasypoda altercator (Swammerdam's Bee: B. Ent. 367). • Dasypoda altercator (detail: B. Ent. 367). • Dasypoda altercator (dissections: B. Ent. 367). • Dasypoda altercator: B. Ent. 367, legend+text. • Dasypoda altercator: B. Ent. 367, text cont.. • Macropis labiata europaea: Saunders XXXIV). MELITTIDAE. Macropis europaea. Male (5) and female (6); genital armature of the male (7), and 7th ventral segment (8). From Saunders (1896, Plates XXXIV and XXXV). • Dasypoda, Melitta (Saunders XXXV). MELITTIDAE. 1 and 2: Dasypoda altercator, male (1) and female. 3, Melitta haemorrhoidalis, female. 4 and 5, Melitta leporina, male (4) and female. 9 and 10, genital armature of males: 9, Dasypoda altercator; 10, Melitta haemorrhoidalis.
ANDRENIDAE. 6 and 11, Panurgus calcaratus: female (6) and male genital armture.
From Saunders (1896).
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 families of Hymenoptera. Version: 14th April 2022. delta-intkey.com’.
