Centris orellanai Ruiz, 1940

Vivallo, Felipe, 2023, Taxonomic notes on the primary types of some species of Centris bees described by some entomologists from the Americas (Hymenoptera: Apidae), Iheringia, Série Zoologia (e 2023003) 113, pp. 1-18 : 5

Centris orellanai Ruiz, 1940

Centris nigerrima var. orellanai RUIZ, 1940: 335 .

Type data. The holotype female of this supposed variety was originally housed at CSPN and according to José Salamanca, current curator of the museum most likely it was destroyed, as well as much of Ruiz’s collection. Based on that information, VIVALLO (2013) designated a neotype, providing a redescription based on it. In 2017, during a visit to the bee collection of the AMNH I found a female, mixed with other specimens that match exactly with the information provided by Ruiz in the description of C. orellanai . I am interpreting that female as the true type specimen of C. nigerrima var. orellanai , being here recognized as such. The specimen is in good condition and it has the following data label: [white label with blue rimmed margin] Coll ORELLANA [printed in blue] Pelambres. 16 [handwritten].93. [printed in blue] I 5 [handwritten] CHILE [printed in blue]\ Centris orellanai Ruiz, 1941 [printed]\ [yellow label] PARATIPO [printed]\ [light blue label] HOLOTYPE Centris nigerrima var. orellanai Ruiz, 1940 F. Vivallo lab, 2017 [handwritten] ( AMNH).

Ruiz mentioned three females and one male but it is not clear if the specimen he chose as holotype had the same information label of the other two females. If the three females shared the same information, then the specimen housed at AMNH could be interpreted as a syntype and not as the holotype of the species. Considering this, along with the unknown whereabouts of the other two females, seems correct, at least until one of the other two missing females is found, to recognize that female as holotype avoiding the designation of a lectotype. Independently of the option chosen, that female belongs to the type series of the species. It is not clear how and when that female was sent to the AMNH. A possibility could be when Haroldo Toro sent a large number of specimens to the AMNH, because the female bears a yellow label of paratype that Toro used to put in his specimens.

Type locality. Chile: Coquimbo Region: Los Pelambres .

Haroldo Toro. Haroldo Enrique Toro Gutiérrez was a Chilean entomologist (1934–2002). From his youth, he was interested in teaching, maybe influenced by his mother, a teacher of a school in Chillán, southern Chile ( CHIAPPA, 2003). Toro was a brilliant student of biology and chemical and due his talent and capacities he was incorporated as Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile ( PUCV). In that institution Toro created the Laboratory of Zoology and teach classes of Zoology and Entomology. In this later area, he made his most important contributions, mainly focused on taxonomy, systematics and bionomy of Chilean bees. He described 144 species, in Andrenidae , Colletidae , Halictidae , Megachilidae and Apidae . Toro is still recognized internationally as the most important Chilean melittologist and I am sure that all his students were proud to have had the opportunity to meet him during their professional training and to have attended one of his classes. Haroldo Toro passed away in Valparaíso, aged 67.

Elizabeth Chiappa. Originally linked to pedagogy in Biology, Elizabeth Chiappa Tapia (1941‒ 2022), was an academic of the Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Exactas of the Universidad de Playa Ancha ( UPLA), Valparaíso, Chile. From there, she developed an extensive research career related to the reproductive behavior of bees and wasps from Chile. She was formed by Haroldo Toro who introduced her to the world of insects. In a short time, she moved away from taxonomy and concentrated her studies on ethology, the area where she focused most of her research. Elizabeth Chiappa passed away during the development of this article in Viña del Mar, Chile, aged 81.

Toro & Chiappa’s Centris bees. During the decades of 1960 and 1980 Toro and his colleagues at the Department of Zoology of the PUCV made several collecting trips to northern Chile, mainly to the Atacama Desert. In those trips were collected biological samples of diverse groups of organisms which were used in the disciplines of Zoology for graduate and undergraduate students. During those trips to La Tirana and Pica in the Tarapacá Region there were collected the specimens used by Toro and Chiappa to describe a new species and subspecies of Centris . The holotypes of both taxa are currently housed at AMNH.