Centris langsdorfii Blanchard,1840

Vivallo, Felipe, 2023, The primary types of some species of Centris bees described by European entomologists in the 18 and 20 centuries (Hymenoptera: Apidae), European Journal of Taxonomy 864, pp. 1-27 : 3-4

Centris langsdorfii Blanchard,1840

Centris langsdorfii Blanchard, 1840: 405 (spelled langsdorsii [sic] in the text and langsdorfii in the figure legend).

Type data

Syntypes female, whereabouts unknown.

Type locality

Brazil.

Karl Hermann Konrad Burmeister

Karl Hermann Konrad Burmeister (1807–1892) was a German naturalist, zoologist, entomologist, herpetologist, botanist and geologist. He was nationalized Argentinean and developed most of his career in that country. In 1850, Burmeister traveled to Brazil, visiting Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais states.

In the latter, he went to Lagoa Santa spending a season in company of the Danish naturalist and father of Brazilian paleontology and archeology Peter Wilhelm Lund (1801–1880).

From 1862 to 1892, Burmeister was director of the Argentinean Museum of Natural Sciences, currently known as Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales (MACN). He died in Buenos Aires in 1892, at the age of 85.

Burmeister’s Centris bees

Burmeister described numerous species of flora and fauna from Argentina, four of them being bees of the genus Centris . Three of these species were described based on series of specimens of both sexes collected mainly in Mendoza and Buenos Aires. Although Burmeister did not indicate the name of the collector of those specimens, it is very likely that they were collected by him during his many trips into the interior of the country.

Some specimens of the primary series bear labels of holotype, paratype or allotype. However, they were labeled as such after the description of the species and not by Burmeister, since the handwriting is different, and mainly because the concept of paratype and allotype was not established in Burmeister’s time. All type specimens are housed in the MACN.