Camptopoeum (Camptopoeum) baldocki Wood and Cross, spec. nov.
Creators: name: Wood, As. J.
name: Cross, Ian
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2017
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Hymenoptera
Andrenidae
Camptopoeum
Camptopoeum baldocki

description: Camptopoeum (Camptopoeum) baldocki Wood and Cross, spec. nov.
Holotype. PORTUGAL: Cacela Velha (Latitude 37.157, Longitude -7.543), 27.4.2016, 1♂ (leg. T.J. Wood). Deposited in the Natural History Museum, London (NHML), reference code NHMUK 010265327.
Paratypes. PORTUGAL: Cacela Velha, 27.4.2016, 5♂ (leg. T.J. Wood); Pêra, Praia Grande (Latitude 37.100, Longitude -8.351) 15/ 19.5.2016, 4♂, 5♀ (leg. I. Cross); Tavira (Latitude 37.121, Longitude -7.620), 29– 31.5.2016, 1♂ (leg. A. Livory & R. Coulomb). 1♀ deposited in the BMNH with the remaining material retained in the private collections of the authors and A. Livory & R. Coulomb (Manche).
Diagnosis. Small black and creamy-white marked (henceforth referred to as pale) bee with a body length of 4 mm in both sexes. The glossa is longer than the prementum and the first segment of the labial palpus is subequal to the length of the second to the fourth segments taken together, placing C. baldocki in subgenus Camptopoeum sensu strictu (Figure 1). The female is characterised from other members of this subgenus by the almost completely black face and reduced pale markings on the metasomal terga (Figure 5). The male is also characterised by the facial markings (Figure 1), with pale maculation restricted to the ventral surface of the antennal scape, the clypeus and the basal half of the mandibles.
Description. FEMALE: Body length 4 mm. Female material is pictured in Figure 5. Head: Head slightly wider than long, ground colour black. The eyes are blue-grey in life though this disappears after death. Proboscis long, three to four times the length of a mandible. Glossa long, approximately three times the length of the prementum. The length of the first segment of the labial palpus is subequal to the length of the second to the fourth segments taken together. Head entirely black except for a narrow white line along the upper clypeal margin, where this abuts the supraclypeal area. At its greatest extent this spans the entire width and is broader in the centre. At its least extent it is reduced to a single, pale central dot. Mandibles dull orange-yellow in the basal half, apically dark reddish-brown. Antennal scape entirely black. Antennal segments 3–13 ventrally marked with dull orange-yellow, dorsally dark to brown. Mesosoma: Mesonotum with punctures superficial, barely discernible against the faint background microreticulation, distance between the punctures approximately equal to a puncture width. Puncture interspaces weakly shining with faint microreticulation. The mesosoma is entirely black apart from pale markings as follows: the rear half of the pronotal lobes, two very fine lines on the rear margin of the scutellum (absent in one out of four specimens) and a broad band occupying much of the dorsal surface of the metanotum. The tegulae are transparent brown with some obscure pale markings on the wing bases. Legs black-brown apart from the following pale markings: a small dorsal apical spot on femora 1–2 and a broad streak almost the entire length of the front of tibia 1–2. The tarsi and tibia 3 are a slightly paler, translucent brown. Pilosity silvery. The tibial scopa of sparse, pale, curved hairs: the ventral ones roughly twice as long as the dorsal. Stigma and veins of forewing brown. Metasoma: Terga densely but weakly punctured, the punctures barely visible against the background reticulation. The distance between the punctures one to two times a puncture width. Tergal margins 1–4 impressed, colour varying from black (concolourous with ground colour of terga) to reddish brown. Terga with pairs of lateral pale spots immediately anterior to the depressed marginal area. On tergum 1 there is a single pair. On terga 2–4 there are two on both sides, each pair formed by an irregular, subtriangular spot at the rear corner and a short dash between this and the centre line of the tergite. The exterior spots on T4 are frequently missing and the dashes may be absent progressively from T2 to T4, such that the darkest specimens only have the exterior spots on T1–3. Sterna entirely dark. The pygidium is subtriangular, roughly as wide at the base as long, with slightly convex sides and a rounded tip. There is a very faint hint of a longitudinal, central raised area.
MALE: Characters are identical to the female unless mentioned as follows. Male material is pictured in Figure 6. Head: Clypeus pale except for a pair of small black dots, each located towards the midpoint of the lateral clypeal margin (Figure 1). Some males may additionally have two or three small, linear pale dots at the lower edge of the supraclypeal area and a small, irregular dot in the lower half of the paraocular area. Mandibles yellow in the basal third to half, apically reddish brown. Antennal scape ventrally pale marked, dorsally black. Antennal segments 3– 13 ventrally marked with orange, dorsally dark to orange-brown. Mesosoma: Pronotum, pronotal lobes, scutellum and metanotum pale marked. Tegulae and wing bases brown with variable faint pale markings. Proximal margin of scutellum black with a central black marking extending posteriorly, separating the two pale patches on the distal scutellar margin (seen in Figure 10). Legs black-brown apart from the following pale markings: the apical third of femora 1–3, the entirety of tibia 1–2, tarsi 1 and basitarsi 2 in the basal half. Metasoma: Terga 1–5(6) with a pale band immediately anterior to the depressed marginal area, this band generally reaching the lateral margin on terga 1–3. Genitalia illustrated in Figure 3.
Pollen hosts. Several days of observation at Pêra and the analysis of one scopal load showed exclusive use of Frankenia laevis as a pollen host (Figure 9). Given the absence of co-flowering congenerics this observed pattern of pollen use is best referred to as a special case of narrow oligolecty (Müller & Kuhlmann 2008). Ideally a greater number of pollen loads would have been collected, but given this subfamily’s propensity for narrow oligolecty, exclusive use of Frankenia is highly likely. Further observation and pollen load analysis would of course strengthen this claim. Data on the pollen hosts of other Camptopoeum species are scarce. C. (C.) friesei, the only other Camptopoeum species recorded with certainty from Iberia, and the closely related C. (C.) frontale Fabricius are both oligolectic on Asteraceae, predominantly foraging from Centaurea and Carduus (Friese 1926). To our knowledge, there are no published records of Frankeniaceae as a pollen host for oligolectic Old World panurgine bees. Narrow oligolecty on Frankenia has been observed in Hoplitis (Stenosmia), species of dry, desert environments (Müller 2014, Table 3). No data on Frankenia oligolecty are readily available for other bee species.
Distribution. Known only from saltmarsh edges along the southern coast of the central and eastern Algarve, Portugal. The pollen host plant, Frankenia laevis, is distributed irregularly along the entire Portuguese coast, with the majority of records in the southern half of the country (Flora-On 2014). Given the ecologically similar and extensive areas of saltmarsh, C. baldocki could well occur, and should be searched for, in the Marismas de Isla Cristina, Rio Piedras and Odiel in Huelva Province or the mouth of the Guadalquivir in Sevilla Province, Andalucía, Spain.
Nesting biology. All known panurgines are ground nesters (Rozen 1967; Michener 2007). C. baldocki was observed nesting in bare saline soils at Pêra. At both Cacela Velha and Pêra, male bees were seen investigating possible nest holes, running quickly between entrances and flying low over the ground. Nesting was only observed within a short distance from the coast, and only on soils which had a clear saline influence (Figure 8). The association with high-salinity soils is not unusual for this genus. C. (C.) friesei and C. (C.) frontale are associated with areas of dry steppes or silvosteppes (Tomozei & Patiny 2006). Many of these areas have soils with a high salt content, such as the Pannonic salt steppe of Austria and Hungary, and here C. (C.) friesei is classed as a halophilous species (Anon 2005). C. (C.) nasutum Spinola is known only from the south of France and north of Italy where it is associated with coastal sand dunes (Anon 2012). Within this context, the existence of a new species of Camptopoeum in the extensive but understudied coastal saltmarshes of southern Portugal is less surprising.
Etymology. The epithet baldocki was chosen to commend the work of David Baldock, Surrey, United Kingdom, who has worked tirelessly since 1999 to improve the knowledge of the extensive but poorly studied Portuguese bee fauna.
description: Published as part of Wood, As. J. & Cross, Ian, 2017, Camptopoeum (Camptopoeum) baldocki spec. nov., a new panurgine bee species from Portugal and a description of the male of Flavipanurgus fuzetus Patiny (Andrenidae: Panurginae), pp. 285-293 in Zootaxa 4254 (2) on pages 286-289, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4254.2.9, http://zenodo.org/record/545919