Diadasia (Coquillettapis) sphaeralcearum Cockerell, 1905

Pedro, Diego De, Ceccarelli, Fadia Sara, Sagot, Philippe, López-Reyes, Eulogio, Mullins, Jessica L., Mérida-Rivas, Jorge A., Falcon-Brindis, Armando, Griswold, Terry, Ascher, John S., Gardner, Joel, Ayala, Ricardo, Vides-Borrell, Eric & Vandame, Rémy, 2024, Revealing the Baja California Peninsula’s Hidden Treasures: An Annotated checklist of the native bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila), Zootaxa 5522 (1), pp. 1-391 : 159-160

Diadasia (Coquillettapis) sphaeralcearum Cockerell, 1905 *

[ Syntype: ♂ between Las Cruces and Mesilla Park, New Mexico, USA; middle August ]

This is a new species for the BCP. In Mexico it was only known in Chihuahua, Coahuila and Durango. As the specific epithet suggests, this species specializes on pollen from plants in the genus Sphaeralcea A. St. - Hil. ( Malvaceae ) (Sipes & Tepedino 2005). The BBPT collected 13 specimens: six males in the Lower Colorado Desert in June 2021 ,

two females in the Coastal Sage Matorral in May 2022, four females in Chaparral in May 2022, and one female in May 2022 in the Baja California Mountains at Sierra Juarez. See fig. 96.