Megachile (Chalicodoma) apennina Benoist, 1940

Risch, Stephan, Roberts, Stuart P. M., Smit, Jan, Wood, Thomas J., Michez, Denis & Reverté, Sara, 2023, The new annotated checklist of the wild bees of Europe (Hymenoptera: Anthophila), Zootaxa 5327 (1), pp. 1-147 : 64

Megachile (Chalicodoma) apennina Benoist, 1940

Megachile pyrenaica f. nigricans Benoist, 1935: 102 ; nom. preoccup., nec M. nigricans Cameron, 1898 , M. nigricans Friese, 1913 and M. nigricans Alfken, 1913 .

Megachile muraria var. apennina Benoist, 1940: 43 .

Megachile benoisti Tkalců, 1977: 236 . Nomen novum pro Megachile nigricans Benoist, 1935 .

This taxon differs from Megachile pyrenaica Lepeletier, 1841 in the dark, nearly entirely black vestiture. No sculptural differences are known between the two taxa. It is closely allied to Megachile pyrenaica and may be an infraspecific form of the latter. While Megachile pyrenaica is widely distributed throughout the mountainous areas of the Palearctic, M. apennina is nearly entirely restricted to central and southern Italy. While it could easily be treated as a geographic form (e.g., a subspecies) of M. pyrenaica , two facts support its recognition as a distinct taxon: first, a disjunct population of M. apennina is present on the island of Cephalonia ( H. Paulus and C. Praz, unpublished data), next to nominal populations of M. pyrenaica in the Peloponnese; second, no intermediate population is known between M. pyrenaica and M. apennina . The status of Megachile apennina requires further investigation, and for now this taxon is retained as a valid species.