Bombus (Alpigenobombus) wurflenii Radoszkowski, 1860

Williams, Paul H., An, Jiandong, Dorji, Phurpa, Huang, Jiaxing, Jaffar, Saleem, Japoshvili, George, Narah, Jaya, Ren, Zongxin, Streinzer, Martin, Thanoosing, Chawatat, Tian, Li & Orr, Michael C., 2023, Bumblebees with big teeth: revising the subgenus Alpigenobombus with the good, the bad and the ugly of numts (Hymenoptera: Apidae), European Journal of Taxonomy 892 (1), pp. 1-65 : 26-31

1. Bombus (Alpigenobombus) wurflenii Radoszkowski, 1860 s. str.

Figs 19‒25 , 106

Bombus WURFLENii [sic] Radoszkowski, 1860: 482.

Bombus alpigenus Morawitz, 1874: 132 .

Alpigenobombus wurfleini subsp. uralicus Tkalců, 1969: 891 , by indication of Pittioni (1938). Note 1.

Bombus Wurfleini ‒ Radoszkowski 1877: 191, incorrect subsequent spelling.

Bombus Wurfleni ‒ Radoszkowski 1877: 191, incorrect subsequent spelling.

Bombus mastrucatus morpha [not subsp.] uralicus ‒ Pittioni 1938: 66, infrasubspecific.

NOTE 1. Alpigenobombus wurfleini subsp. uralicus Tkalců, 1969: 891 , by indication of Pittioni (1938). Lectotype by designation of Tkalců (1969: 893): ♀ (queen) central Ural Mountains (‘Sojmonowsk’), Russia (NHMUK), examined.According to A. Byvaltsev (pers. com.), the type queen of the taxon uralicus was collected on the territory of modern Karabash, in Chelyabinsk Oblast (55.4465° N, 60.2151° E, ca 320 m a.s.l., but with ridges 20 km to the southwest that reach to ca 1100 m a.s.l.). The Soymonovsky goldmine (named after V.Yu. Soymonov, chairman of the Temporary Mining Commission responsible for the development of gold in the Middle Urals) and the small settlement Sak-Elginsky Vyselok were located here. Later copper deposits were discovered in the area and the Soymonovsky copper smelter was founded in 1834. The Sak-Elginsky settlement then began to be called Soymonovsky or simply Soymonovsk [= ‘Sojmonowsk’].

Species-taxon concept and variation

The taxon concept of the species B. wurflenii is revised here from the widely-cited interpretation since Tkalců (1969), to distinguish B. wurflenii from the separate taxon concept for the species B. mastrucatus (see the comments below on B. mastrucatus ), based on: (1) our PTP analysis supports independent species-level coalescents in the COI gene ( Fig. 12 ); corroborated by (2) diagnostic morphological character states (see below and the keys).

The morphological results (see the keys) support the interpretation that the individuals with the divergent colour patterns of the taxa wurflenii s. str. (Figs 20‒25) and uralicus (lectotype queen Fig. 19) are conspecific, although only a single queen of the taxon uralicus is available. Only two other individuals of the taxon uralicus from the Urals are definitely known at present (A. Byvaltsev pers. com.): a male from 1909 and a female from 1929 (both ZIN).

Variation in the colour-pattern diagrams for B. wurflenii in Figs 19‒25 is arranged approximately from north (Urals) to south ( Turkey). Bombus wurflenii , with its white-banded red-tailed female colour pattern in Turkey and the Caucasus, appears to mimic the more abundant B. (Melanobombus) incertus Morawitz, 1881 , B. (Ml.) eriophorus Klug, 1807 , and similar species ( Williams 2007: fig. 5l).

Type material

Bombus WURFLENii Radoszkowski, 1860: 482 . Type not seen, but identity not in doubt.

Morphological diagnosis

Female Wings nearly clear with veins dark brown, hair long, oculo-malar area shorter than broad, clypeus adjacent to the labrum not raised in the centre but flat so that the shallow transverse anterior groove is not interrupted, this central area uniformly with many small punctures and not shining, ocello-ocular area with the punctures anteriorly to the unpunctured area at least as dense as posterior to it (cf. B. mastrucatus ); hair of the thoracic dorsum black, with bands anteriorly and usually posteriorly grey-white.

Male

Wings nearly clear with veins dark brown, hair long, oculo-malar area shorter than broad; genitalia ( Fig. 106 ) with the gonostylus long and distally near its midline axis convexly rounded, length on its outer side about a quarter as long as on its inner side with the two inner corners of the distal lobe rounded, the margin between them nearly straight, penis-valve head strongly recurved, the recurved hook much longer than broad and distally at the end of the hook broadly rounded (cf. B. mastrucatus ); hair of the thoracic dorsum between the wing bases either predominantly pale cream-yellow or with many pale cream-yellow hairs.

Material sequenced in Fig. 12

GEORGIA • 1 ♀ (queen); Lagodekhi ; 41.8714° N, 46.3645° E; 22 Jun. 2015; G. Kirkitadze leg.; BOLD seq: 1555A01; IEAUG: AG#065 .

Global distribution

Western Asia: Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia (Caucasus, Urals): IEAUG, NHM, PW, ZIN.

This species is recorded at elevations of 1600‒2570 m in Turkey in the montane and subalpine coniferous forest zone ( Rasmont & Flagothier 1996) and in the alpine zone in the northern Caucasus ( Skorikov 1910).

Behaviour

Male eye not obviously enlarged relative to female eye: males are expected to show ‘patrolling’ behaviour in search of mates ( Williams 1991).

Figures

Figs 19–105 (see pages 28–29). Simplified diagrams for the colour patterns of the hair on the dorsum for particular female (f) and male (m) specimens of the species from Fig. 12. The dorsum is divided into regions, each of which shows only the predominant or most apparent colour for that region, using a simplified colour palette, with olive indicating a mixture of black and yellow hair, and grey indicating a mixture of black and white hair.

Figs 106–115. Morphology of the male genitalia for species of the subgenus Alpigenobombus Skorikov, 1914, from the dorsal aspect, anterior at the bottom of the image, posterior at the top. 106. Bombus wurflenii Radoszkowski, 1860, Turkey. 107. B mastrucatus Gerstaecker, 1869, Austria. 108. B. kashmirensis Friese, 1909, India-Kashmir. 109. B. rainai Williams, 2022, India-Kashmir. 110. B. sikkimi Friese, 1918, Nepal. 111. B. nobilis Friese, 1905, China-Sichuan. 112. B. validus Friese, 1905, China-Gansu. 113. B. genalis Friese, 1918, China-Yunnan. 114. B. breviceps Smith, 1852, ChinaSichuan. 115. B. grahami (Frison, 1933) China-Sichuan (left penis-valve recurved hook missing). Scale bars = 1 mm.

Fig. 12. Interpretation of filtered MrBayes estimate of phylogeny as a metric tree (outgroup B. festivus Smith, 1861, not shown) for the subgenus Alpigenobombus Skorikov, 1914, from COI-like sequences from the sequences identified in black and orange in Fig. 11 together with Bayesian Poisson-tree-process (PTP) models re-applied for assessing support for species’ gene coalescents by maximum likelihood (for the 11 most likely candidate species). The scale bar is calibrated in substitutions per nucleotide site. Sequence labels and branch colours as in Fig. 10. Numbers above nodes are the Bayesian support values that all daughter haplotypes are parts of a single species. Grey spots show likely mitochondrial-to-nuclear transfers of the low-divergence numts accepted for estimating this tree. Asterisks mark sequences used as informal proxies for the type specimens of each of the taxon names in Table 2. To the right in grey are shown the interpretations of the PTP results as candidate species using the oldest available names for the species.