Bombus (Pyrobombus) perplexus Cresson, 1863

Williams, Paul H., Dorji, Phurpa, Ren, Zongxin, Xie, Zhenghua & Orr, Michael, 2022, Bumblebees of the hypnorum-complex world-wide including two new near-cryptic species (Hymenoptera: Apidae), European Journal of Taxonomy 847, pp. 46-72 : 65-66

Bombus (Pyrobombus) perplexus Cresson, 1863

Figs 1–2 , 39‒50

B. [ombus] perplexus Cresson, 1863: 91 . Type not seen (believed lost, Cresson 1916), but identity not in doubt.

B. [ombus] Hudsonicus Cresson, 1863: 92. Type not seen (believed lost, Cresson 1916), but identity not in doubt.

Diagnosis

Female

Distinguished by the combination: clypeus in the centre with widely scattered large punctures with more numerous small punctures between them; ocello-ocular area along the inner eye margin with a broad band of sparse medium and small punctures; scutum with the hair usually yellow; T5 hair usually entirely black, but sometimes white or cream posteriorly and occasionally throughout; T5 posteriorly in the middle anterior to the smooth posterior margin with a broad band of large punctures extending for at least a quarter of the length of the tergum.

Male

Distinguished by the combination: hair variable, from the thorax and metasomal T1‒6 yellow, to T1‒2 yellow and T3‒6 black

Material examined

Material sequenced or examined

CANADA • 1 ♀ (queen); Ontario, Toronto High Park ; 43.6460° N, 79.4679° W; alt 95 m; 11 May 1983; P. Williams leg.; PW • 1 ♀ (queen); Nova Scotia, Kings County; 45.1298° N, 64.7383° W; 13 Jun. 2003; C. Sheffield leg.; BOLD-Bee25-3 ; PW .

USA • 1 ♀ (worker); Kentucky, Camp Ernst; 38.9974° N, 84.7141° W; alt. 246 m; 1 Jun. 2006; P. Williams leg.; BOLD-1550H03 ; PW • 1 ♂; New York, Catskill Mts Highway 17; 41.650° N, 74.683° W; 28 Jul. 2004; P. Williams leg.; PW .

Other material sequenced

BOLD: 3742D01, 3742D02, 3742D10, Bee25-2, 03-BC-0414, 6706C01, 6717D10-YT, BIOUG45105A07, 08BBHYM-0560.

Distribution

Widespread in boreal North America in the north (from Alaska to Quebec) and extending southwards along the Appalachian mountains ( Williams et al. 2014), at elevations of 0‒1852 m (L. Richardson, pers. comm.).

Figures

Fig. 1. MRBAYES estimate of phylogeny as a metric tree (outgroup B. alpinus (Linnaeus, 1758) not shown) from COI barcodes from GenBank and BOLD databases for the vagans-group and hypnorum- group, with additions from the authors for the hypnorum-group of bumblebees, filtered to remove duplicate and short sequences. Each sequence is labelled with: sequence length; a taxon name from the database; a code consisting of a sequence identifier from the project database and a specimen identifier from the online database; its country and (for larger countries) state or province). The scale bar is calibrated in substitutions per nucleotide site. Results of Bayesian Poisson-tree-process (PTP) models applied for assessing support for species’ gene coalescents by maximum likelihood are shown as PTP scores above the branches: scores approaching 1 and where branches change from blue to red indicates are where the most likely species’ gene coalescents are detected. Asterisks mark sequences used as informal proxies for the type specimens of each of the taxon names in Table 2.

Fig. 2. Distribution of barcoded samples of the hypnorum-complex and B. perplexus Cresson, 1863, with the interpretations as separate candidate species from Fig. 1 shown as different coloured spots as per the colour key on the left. Relief map with hill shading, polar projection (north pole shown as a star), the international boundaries and the Arctic Circle are shown as narrow grey lines, and the northern tree line shown as a broad grey line. Image created in ArcGIS using World_Shaded_Relief basemap (© 2014 Esri).

Figs 39–50. Simplified diagrams for the colour patterns of the hair on the dorsum for ♀♀ (above) and ♂♂ (below) of Bombus perplexus Cresson, 1863. The dorsum is divided into regions, each of wshich shows only the predominant or most apparent colour for that region using a simplified colour palette (precise shades vary), with olive indicating a mixture of black and yellow hair, and grey indicating a mixture of black and white hair.