86. Megachile senex Smith, 1865

Fig. 85

Megachile senex Smith, 1865: 92, ♀.

Type material examined

Holotype

INDONESIA • ♀; N. [New Guinea]; [1861]; OUMNH, ENT-HYME2840.

Type locality

New Guinea. Allen visited the area around Sorong in West Papua (probably) in the first half of 1861 (Wallace 1869; Baker 1993), and so the type locality can be considered to be Indonesia (West Papua).

Notes

Baker (1993: 236) identified this specimen as the holotype and stated that he labelled it, but we found no type label; this has now been rectified.

Current status

Megachile (Callomegachile) tertia Dalla Torre, 1896 . Megachile senex Smith, 1865 is a junior primary homonym of Megachile senex Smith, 1853 (described from South Africa, although this was a mislabelled specimen) and Megachile senex Smith, 1862 (described from Australia). Dalla Torre (1896: 450) noticed this, and provided a replacement name.

Distribution

Indonesia (Maluku, West Papua) (Smith 1865; Ascher & Pickering 2024).