Bombus confusus Schenck, 1859

Ornosa, Concepción, Torres, Félix & Rúa, Pilar De La, 2017, Updated list of bumblebees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) from the Spanish Pyrenees with notes on their decline and conservation status, Zootaxa 4237 (1), pp. 41-77 : 65

Bombus confusus Schenck, 1859

Bombus confusus has a disjunct distribution in Europa and Central Asia ( Ornosa & Ortiz-Sánchez 2004). The western population is spread across Europe , with the exception of Fennoscandia and the British Isles. It has already disappeared from large part of its range, and therefore, it is assessed as Vulnerable in the IUCN Red List of European Bees (Rasmont et al. 2006, Rasmont et al. 2015).

In the Iberian fauna, B. confusus is a very rare ( Fig. 5 ) and a threatened species that suffers regression ( Table 3 ): eigth individuals were observed from 1 980 until 1991, at isolated points of the Pyrenees and Navarra ( Fig. 5 ), from 600 to 1500 m, on cleared areas of Coniferae forest and alpine pastures. Rasmont (1988) found it in a higher altitude, 1800 and 2000 m, in some records of a couple of localities in the eastern Pyrenees. Nevertheless , several of the scarce Iberian records were based on individuals from 1900 or from 1980’s (Ornosa 2011), where it has not been collected again due to habitat transformation into cereal crops. In 2012, Castro (pers. comm.) found an individual outside the Pyrenees, further inside the Iberian Peninsula.

The Pyrenean B. confusus was assessed as Endangered (EN) in the IUCN Spanish Red List (Ornosa 2011) ( Table 3 ). Regardless, strict measures for the protection to this species are urgently required.

Figures

FIGURE 5. Map showing historical locations (●) of Bombus confusus.