Centris rhodomelas Timberlake 1940

Centris rhodomelas Timberlake, 1940

Centris rhodomelas TIMBERLAKE, 1940: 139.

Type data. This species was described based on two females and sixteen males collected in different places of California. The holotype is currently housed at CAS and three male paratypes at AMNH. The holotype female was collected by the American entomologist Richard Mitchell Bohart (1913‒2007) at Mariposa in June 18 th 1938 and has the following data label: [white label with black lateral margins] Mariposa Calif. VI-18-38 [handwritten]\ R. M. Bohart Collector [printed]\ Centris rhodomelas Timb. Types [handwritten]\ [red label] Holotype [printed] C. rhodomelas [handwritten]\ California Academy of Sciences Type No. [printed] 14807 [handwritten] (CAS).

Paratype male with the following data label: Sespe Canyon Cal [printed] VI.9.26 [handwritten]\ [yellow label] Paratype [printed] C. rhodomelas [handwritten] (AMNH).

Paratype male with the following data label: Sespe Canyon Cal [printed] VI.9.26 [handwritten]\ [yellow label] Paratype [printed] C. rhodomelas [handwritten]\ Centris rhodomelas Timb. Timb. det. [handwritten] (AMNH).

Paratype male with the following data label: [white label with black lateral margins] Mariposa Calif. VI.18.38 [handwritten]\ [yellow label] Paratype [printed] C. rhodomelas [handwritten]\ Centris rhodomelas Timb. Timb. ♂ [handwritten] (AMNH).

Type locality. United States: California State: Mariposa.

Roy Snelling. Roy Robert Snelling (1934‒2008) was an American entomologist who studied ants, wasps and bees. Born of Cherokee Indian heritage in 1934 in Turlock, California, he was basically a self-taught entomologist. Snelling was curator and collections manager in the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. In that institution he developed most of his research work, remaining there between 1963 and 1993, when he retired. Snelling was very prolific studying ants and he was much respected among the myrmecological society. He also published articles on wasps and bees, mainly from desert areas of the United States and Mexico (TRAGER, 2008). Snelling became interested in insects, mainly on bees and wasps when he was a kid living in the San Joaquin Valley, California. This early interest became his first article on wasps published in 1953, when he was barely out of high school (TRAGER, 2008). Although from the beginning he was interested in the nesting biology and other aspects of behavior of aculeate Hymenoptera, his main contributions were on systematics; like most systematists he was an active and enthusiastic collector (TRAGER, 2008).

His work on bees, mostly on taxonomy, led to 45 publications that appeared from 1954 to 1997, focused on different taxa. For the genus Hylaeus Fabricius, 1793 (Colletidae), he published numerous papers, with emphasis on the North American and African species. For the genus Centris and its allies, his publications included revisions of North and Central America. He was also interested in the cleptoparasitic subfamily Nomadinae (Apidae) but in this group his contributions were relatively modest (TRAGER, 2008). While on an ant expedition in Kenya, Snelling passed away, aged 73.

Snelling’s Centris bees. Among his articles on bees, Snelling published five on Centris species between 1956 and 1988. In those articles he made taxonomic revisions of the species of the genus that occur in North and Central America, describing several new species, proposing new synonymies and citing new distribution records and floral hosts. In that series of publications, Snelling’s knowledge on Centris bees is perceived to be growing, being the article published in 1984 his most extensive and complete. That publication became Snelling’s most famous contribution in the genus, being widely used for the identification of North American species. Despite its relevance, unfortunately that paper contains several errors, mainly related to the fact that Snelling did not study most of the type specimens of the species he cited. This fact led him to identify erroneously some species, as well as proposing new synonymies that are currently considered incorrect.

In total, Snelling described 23 species in Centris, four of them currently synonymized. His last contribution in the genus was the description of C. gavisa Snelling, 1988 from Cerro de La Neblina, southern Venezuela.