Centris smithii Friese, 1899

Vivallo, Felipe, 2020, Species of the bee genus Centris Fabricius, 1804 described by Heinrich Friese (Hymenoptera: Apidae), Zootaxa 4820 (2), pp. 231-259 : 249-250

Centris smithii Friese, 1899

Centris smithii Friese, 1899: 43 . Junior primary homonym of C. smithii Cresson, 1879 . Junior synonym of C. chilensis ( Spinola, 1851) ( Moure 1950) .

Type data: This species was described from male and female specimens collected in Chile and Bolivia. According to the original description, the Chilean exemplars were collected by the German-Chilean paleontologist and zoologist Rudolph Amandus Philippi (1808–1904). Philippi left his native Germany as a young man and moved to Santiago , Chile in 1851. There, he became professor of botany and zoology and the director of the Museo de Historia Natural ( Cortés 1973). One of the syntypes was found in ZMB and it was studied by Zanella (2002) who designated it as the lectotype. The specimen has the following data label: 1598 [handwritten]\ Centris smithii n. sp. ♂ [hand-written] det. Friese 1898 [printed]\ [red label] Type [printed]\ Zool. Mus. Berlin [printed with blue ink]\ [pink label] LECTOTYPE Centris smithi, Friese F. Zanella, 1998 ( ZMB).

Type locality: Zanella (2002) mentioned the type locality as “ Chile ”, but it cannot be inferred from the labels of the lectotype. He interpreted that the specimen was collected in that country assuming that the exemplar from Bolivia belongs to a different species because C. chilensis is supposedly restricted to Chile. Unfortunately, the current condition and depository of the paralectotype from Bolivia, as well as the others, are unknown .

Comment: This species was correctly interpreted by Vivallo et al. (2003) and Moure et al. (2007).