Centris femoralis 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 : 255

Centris femoralis Friese, 1899

Centris femoralis Friese, 1899: 43 . New junior synonym of C. rufipes Friese, 1899 .

Type data: This species was described based on a single male collected by the Austrian naturalist and explorer Johann Natterer (1787–1843) in an undetermined locality in Brazil. Natterer went to South America, remaining there for 18 years. In 1835, he returned to Vienna with a large collection of specimens ( Dworschak & Stagl 2019), most of which were housed at the NMW, including the male studied by Friese (1899). According to Moure et al. (2007) the holotype is housed at ZMB but it is actually in NMW. The specimen has the following data label: Natterer Brasilien. [printed]\ Centris femoralis n. sp. ♂ [handwritten] det. Friese 1898 [printed]\ [light red label] Holotype [printed] ( NMW).

Type locality: Brazil (“Brasilia” [see comment in C. klugii ]) .

Comments: The type locality cannot be further narrowed down than to Brazil. The type specimen was never studied in detail. Moure (1945) considered C. femoralis the male of C. lutea , proposing it as a junior synonym of this latter species. Now that the true male of C. lutea is known, it is evident that both species are different. Regarding some aspects of the coloration of the pubescence, I propose to consider C. femoralis as a new junior synonym of C. rufipes , a relatively rare species only recorded in Minas Gerais state ( Moure et al. 2007) which is only known from females. The holotype of C. femoralis and the male of C. lutea differs in the coloration of the clypeus (almost completely yellow in C. femoralis ; black with yellow disc in C. lutea ), the coloration of the labrum (yellow in C. femoralis ; blackish in C. lutea ), the coloration of the pubescence on hind legs (yellowish orange in C. femoralis ; blackish in C. lutea ) and by the ocellocular distance in relation to the diameter of the lateral ocellus (approximately two times in C. femoralis ; shorter to relatively aequal in C. lutea ).