Prosopis imperialis Smith, 1863

Wood, T. J., Risch, S., Orr, M. C. & Hogan, J. E., 2025, An illustrated type catalogue of the bee species collected by Alfred Russel Wallace and described by Frederick Smith from Southeast Asia (Hymenoptera: Apoidea), European Journal of Taxonomy 1028, pp. 1-144 : 115-116

74. Prosopis imperialis Smith, 1863

Fig. 73

Prosopis imperialis Smith, 1863: 44–45 , ♀.

Type material examined

Holotype

INDONESIA • ♀; Dor. 10. [Dory]; [ 11 Apr.–29 Jul. 1858]; OUMNH, ENT-HYME2828 .

Type locality

Dory [= Dore Bay, now Manokwari, Doberai Peninsula, West Papua].

Notes

The specimen is labelled “Dor. 10”. Examination of Wallace’s 3rd notebook ( Beccaloni 2025) reveals the following information under “Dorey. (N. Guinea).. Notes on Miscellaneous.”:

“Bee? stings acutely but soon goes off - at flowers.”

This presumably refers to P. imperialis , with its hylaeine and relatively hairless morphology possibly causing Wallace’s uncertainty as to whether or not it was truly a bee.

Hirashima (1980: 114) and Baker (1993: 229) note that Michener (1965: 146) incorrectly listed the NHMUK as the type depository for this species (type 17a, 2835). This specimen bears only a printed rectangular label reading “Dory”, and was not labelled by Smith. It cannot therefore be regarded as a valid type specimen, lacking labels by either collector or describer. Baker (1993: 230) identified the OUMNH specimen as the holotype and stated that he labelled it, but we found no type label; this has now been rectified. Smith (1863: 45) notes that he forgot to describe this species in his 1860b paper, and so it joins Megachile alecto (Section 59) as the only other species described based on Wallacean material from Manokwari.

Current status

Palaeorhiza ( Hadrorhiza) imperialis (Smith, 1863) ( Hirashima 1980) .

Distribution

Indonesia (Southwest Papua) and Papua New Guinea ( Hirashima 1980; Ascher & Pickering 2024).