Trigona ventralis Smith, 1857

Wood, T. J., Risch, S., Orr, M. C. & Hogan, J. E., 2025, An illustrated type catalogue of the bee species collected by Alfred Russel Wallace and described by Frederick Smith from Southeast Asia (Hymenoptera: Apoidea), European Journal of Taxonomy 1028, pp. 1-144 : 37

18. Trigona ventralis Smith, 1857

Trigona ventralis Smith, 1857: 50 , ♀.

Type material examined

Syntype

MALAYSIA • ♀; Borneo, Sar [ Sarawak]; [ 29 Oct. 1854 – 10 Feb. 1856]; NHMUK, Type 17b, 1186 (examined by photograph) .

Type locality

Borneo ( Sarawak), Malacca (Mount Ophir).

Notes

This species was not dealt with by Baker (1993). There are no specimens of T. ventralis in the OUMNH collection. Rasmussen (2008: 12) states that the type is in the NHMUK as type 17b, 1186, and this is a specimen labelled as “Sar.” and with a typical Smith label on blue paper. It bears the accession details of “purch. Stevens: B.M. 1857-36”, indicating that it went directly to the museum and not to W.W. Saunders. As it bears a typical Smith type label, it is clearly a valid syntype, and could be designated as a lectotype to fix the terra typica as Sarawak rather than peninsula Malaysia.

Current status

Lepidotrigona ventralis ( Smith, 1857) ( Rasmussen 2008) .

Distribution

India, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia (Peninsula, Borneo), Indonesia ( Java, Sumatra), Brunei ( Rasmussen 2008).