Tetrigona vidua ( Lepeletier de Saint Fargeau, 1836 )

Rasmussen, Claus, 2008, Catalog of the Indo-Malayan / Australasian stingless bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Meliponini), Zootaxa 1935, pp. 1-80 : 53

Tetrigona vidua ( Lepeletier de Saint Fargeau, 1836)

Melipona vidua Lepeletier de Saint Fargeau 1836: 429 : Syntype (MNHN, 1 worker): putative syntype examined, "Museum Paris / Bengale / Diard & Duvaucel 1815", "vidua", "Diard et Duvaucel", "type", "TYPE", "M. Vidua / Lep. S. Farg / Bengale". I consider this a true type: Alfred Duvaucel (1793-1825) and Pierre-Médard Diard (1794-1863) arrived on their first expedition to Kolkata, India , in January 1818 and spent years collecting in the Indo-Malayan region. The label date is wrong as they were still in France in 1815, but did reside for long periods in India later (Claeys: 1954) and I consider the label provenance merely the port of embarkation of the specimen, rather than the collecting locality. The type is similar to melanoleuca and could be considered a senior synonymon of that. However, melanoleuca is a variable taxon, and is here retained until further studies may document if in fact it is only a single taxon (taxonomy); Type locality: INDONESIA /E TIMOR "Ile de Timor" (unknown); Spinola 1853: 94 (citation); Smith 1854: 413 (citation); Smith 1871: 395 (distribution); INDONESIA/EAST TIMOR, Timor; Castets 1893: 481 (citation); Dalla Torre 1896: 585 (citation); Bingham 1897: 560, 561 (distribution, key to species, taxonomy, uncertain identity); INDIA (misidentification); INDONESIA; MALAYSIA; MYAN- MAR, Tenasserim; Haddon 1901: 87 (common name (manyi), bad omen for Ibans ("if a swarm of bees settled underneath a house that had recently been built it would be considered a bad sign"), uncertain identity); Bingham 1905: 59 (citation, distribution); Friese 1914a: 13 (distribution (maybe itama ?)); INDO- NESIA, Gunung Ungaran; Friese 1918: 519 (comparative note (maybe itama ?)); Cockerell 1918: 387 (comparative notes); Cockerell 1926a: 224 (comparative note); Salt 1929: 454 (citation); Schwarz 1937: 299-300; Schwarz 1939a: 86, 88, 98, 129 (synonymy, taxonomic position); Schwarz 1948: 422; Moure 1961: 217 (morphology, systematic position); Sakagami & Khoo 1987: 207 (comparative note); Camargo 1988: 372 (distribution); INDONESIA, Sumatra; Wu 2000: 386, 390, plate (key to species, morphology).