Andrena (Melandrena) obscuripennis Smith, 1853

Parys, Katherine, Griswold, Terry, Ikerd, Harold W & Orr, Michael Christopher, 2018, New records and range extensions of several species of native bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) from Mississippi, Biodiversity Data Journal 6, pp. 25230-25230 : 25230

Andrena (Melandrena) obscuripennis Smith, 1853

Materials

Type status: Other material. Occurrence: catalogNumber: SIMRU1529 ; recordedBy: Nathan Little; individualCount: 1; sex: female; lifeStage: adult; preparations: pin; occurrenceID: urn:USDA-ARS:SIMRU:SIMRU1529; Taxon: scientificName: Andrena (Melandrena) obscuripennis Smith, 1853; kingdom: Animalia; phylum: Arthropoda; class: Insecta; order: Hymenoptera; family: Andrenidae; genus: Andrena; subgenus: Melandrena; specificEpithet: obscuripennis; scientificNameAuthorship: Smith, 1853; Location: country: United States; stateProvince: Mississippi; county: Coahoma; locality: Dublin, Pheromone trap for lepidoptera ; decimalLatitude: 34.051509; decimalLongitude: -90.502339; geodeticDatum: WGS1984; Identification: identifiedBy: H. Ikerd; dateIdentified: 2017; Event: samplingProtocol: Pheromone Bycatch; eventDate: 2015-5-28; Record Level: type: PhysicalObject; language: en; rights: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/; accessRights: http://vertnet.org/resources/norms.html; institutionCode: USDA-ARS; collectionCode: SIMRU; basisOfRecord: PreservedSpecimen Type status: Other material. Occurrence: catalogNumber: SIMRU13237 ; recordedBy: Katherine A. Parys; individualCount: 1; sex: female; lifeStage: adult; preparations: pin; occurrenceID: urn:USDA-ARS:SIMRU:SIMRU13237; Taxon: scientificName: Andrena (Melandrena) obscuripennis Smith, 1853; kingdom: Animalia; phylum: Arthropoda; class: Insecta; order: Hymenoptera; family: Andrenidae; genus: Andrena; subgenus: Melandrena; specificEpithet: obscuripennis; scientificNameAuthorship: Smith, 1853; Location: country: United States; stateProvince: Mississippi; county: Bolivar; locality: Alcorn Research Farm, Mound Bayou ; decimalLatitude: 33.871265; decimalLongitude: -90.699184; geodeticDatum: WGS1984; Identification: identifiedBy: H. Ikerd; dateIdentified: 2017; Event: samplingProtocol: Vane Trap (Blue); eventDate: 2017-5-10; Record Level: type: PhysicalObject; language: en; rights: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/; accessRights: http://vertnet.org/resources/norms.html; institutionCode: USDA-ARS; collectionCode: SIMRU; basisOfRecord: PreservedSpecimen Type status: Other material. Occurrence: catalogNumber: SIMRU15308 ; recordedBy: Nathan Schiff; individualCount: 1; sex: female; lifeStage: adult; preparations: pin; occurrenceID: urn:USDA-ARS:SIMRU:SIMRU15308; Taxon: scientificName: Andrena (Melandrena) obscuripennis Smith, 1853; kingdom: Animalia; phylum: Arthropoda; class: Insecta; order: Hymenoptera; family: Andrenidae; genus: Andrena; subgenus: Melandrena; specificEpithet: obscuripennis; scientificNameAuthorship: Smith, 1853; Location: country: United States; stateProvince: Mississippi; county: Bolivar; locality: Alcorn Research Farm, Mound Bayou ; decimalLatitude: 33.871265; decimalLongitude: -90.699184; geodeticDatum: WGS1984; Identification: identifiedBy: H. Ikerd; dateIdentified: 2017; Event: samplingProtocol: netting; eventDate: 2017-5-16; Record Level: type: PhysicalObject; language: en; rights: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/; accessRights: http://vertnet.org/resources/norms.html; institutionCode: USDA-ARS; collectionCode: SIMRU; basisOfRecord: PreservedSpecimen

Notes

The currently published distribution of this species is recognised as Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Ontario [Canada] ( Bouseman and LaBerge 1978, Pascarella and Hall 2013, Woodcock et al. 2014). Mitchell (1960) originally included New Jersey and Louisiana as part of the distribution, but those records could not be validated by Bouseman and LaBerge (1978). Additional records from coastal areas of South Carolina, Virginia and Maryland are available online ( Ascher and Pickering 2018). Little is known about the biology of this species, though in a study conducted in Georgia on the flight heights of bees, one individual was collected within 0.5 m of the ground while none were collected in the canopy ( Ulyshen et al. 2010).

Of the three specimens reported here, all were female (Fig. 1). Two of the specimens were collected in Bolivar County at the Alcorn State University Research Farm located in Mound Bayou, MS. One of the specimens was collected in a blue vane trap while the other was netted from a fallow field. The third specimen was retrieved as bycatch from a baited Hartstack pheromone trap located in Coahoma County near Dublin, MS.