Gloss bees

Gloss bees
Gloss bees ( Dufourea )
Systematics
Order : Hymenoptera (Hymenoptera) Superfamily : Apoidea without rank: Bees (Apiformes) Family : Halictidae Subfamily : Rophitinae Genre : Gloss bees
Scientific name
Dufourea
Spinola , 1808

The gloss bees ( Dufourea ) are a genus of bees from the Halictidae family . Of them, 17 species occur in Europe , in Central Europe there are six. The genus is common in Europe, Asia, and North America , with an emphasis on the western United States .

features

The slender bees with a body length of 3.5 to 11 millimeters usually have a shiny black, occasionally blue-green body color and are loosely hairy. Above all, they are very similar to the Lasioglossum species and differ from them in the lack of an abdominal furrow. In the front wing they have only two cubital cells. The females' antennae are short. The females only have a very sparse collecting brush on their hind legs. The males also look similar to the Lasioglossum drones .

Way of life

Glossy bees are mostly oligolectic and only feed on pollen from certain plant species. But there are also polylectic species such as Dufourea alpina . The bees collect pollen mainly with the hairbrushes on the rear rails and the cups that sit on the underside of the hind legs. Some of the pollen also remains attached to the sides of the thorax and the propodeum . The drones fly around near the foliage springs and often spend the night on their flowers. In one generation, the bees fly in midsummer.

The females make their nests solitary in places with little vegetation on the ground and sometimes form small communities. The larvae pupate in a cocoon and hibernate in it. They are parasitized by cuckoo bees from the genus of force bees ( Biastes ).

Systematics

Dufourea belongs to the subfamily Rophitinae. These are possibly paraphyletic and are divided into 13 genera. Dofourea is by far the most species-rich genus of the subfamily with around 130 species. In the Palearctic there are about 60 aerates, in the Nearctic there are about 70 species. There are several groups of similar species, but no consistent sub-genera.

Species (Europe)

• Dufourea alpina Morawitz, 1865
• Dufourea coeruleocephala Morawitz, 1873
• Dufourea cypria Mavromoustakis, 1952
• Dufourea dentiventris (Nylander, 1848)
• Dufourea fortunata Ebmer, 1994
• Dufourea gaullei Vachal, 1897
• Dufourea halictula (Nylander, 1852)
• Dufourea inermis (Nylander, 1848)
• Dufourea iris Ebmer, 1987
• Dufourea longiglossa Ebmer, 1993
• Dufourea lusitanica Ebmer, 1999
• Dufourea merceti Vachal, 1907
• Dufourea minuta Lepeletier, 1841
• Dufourea paradoxa (Morawitz, 1867)
• Dufourea pumila Vachal, 1907
• Dufourea trautmanni Dusmet y Alonso, 1935
• Dufourea wolfi Ebmer, 1989

swell

• www.wildbienen.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dufourea. FaunaEuropaea, accessed April 25, 2008 . 
2. ↑ E. Scheuchl & W. Willner: Pocket dictionary of wild bees in Central Europe . Quelle & Meyer, 2016, ISBN 978-3-494-01653-5 , pp. 370 ff .
3. ↑ Ch. D. Michener: The Bees of the World . 2nd Edition. The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore 2007, pp. 326 f .

Web links

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