Centris (Centris) nitens Lepeletier, 1841

Vivallo, Felipe, 2019, Lectotype designations, taxonomic notes and new synonymies in some species of the bee genus Centris Fabricius, 1804 described by Amédée Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau (Hymenoptera: Apidae), Zootaxa 4624 (1), pp. 23-40 : 27

Centris (Centris) nitens Lepeletier, 1841

Centris nitens Lepeletier, 1841 . 163, 164.

Type data: This species was described based on an undetermined number of females collected in Brazil. According to Lepeletier (1841) the exemplars he used were housed at MNHP. Unfortunately, there were not found specimens under this name in that collection or in OUMNH. Apparently, these specimens have been lost for a long time, because Moure (1969) also failed in finding it some decades ago. According to this author ( Moure, 1969) the type specimens were obtained from Auguste François César Prouvençal de Saint-Hilaire (1779–1853), a famous French entomologist and botanist who lived in Brazil between 1816 and 1822. When he returned to Paris in 1822, he brought approximately 16,000 insects ( Shampo & Kyle, 1988), probably including some of which Lepeletier studied and described later.

Type locality: Brazil: Goiás state .

Comment: Although the types of this species have not been found, the characteristics mentioned by Lepeletier, such as the green coloration of the metasoma and the pattern of pilosity of the body make it possible to recognize this species. This species was correctly interpreted by Snelling (1984) and Moure et al. (2007). According to these latter authors, C. nitens occurs exclusively in South America with distribution records in Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana and Paraguay.