Scaptotrigona (Eoscaptotrigona), 2022

Engel, Michael S., 2022, Notes on South American stingless bees of the genus Scaptotrigona (Hymenoptera: Apidae), Part III: A revised infrageneric classification and new species, Journal of Melittology 2022 (111), pp. 1-29 : 6

Eoscaptotrigona Engel , new subgenus

ZooBank: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:B6F91957-560A-482F-AE57-6267380305EC

TYPE SPECIES: Scaptotrigona bipunctata polysticta Moure, 1950 .

DIAGNOSIS: This subgenus can be characterized by the following combination of traits: integument largely black; bristles of vertex and mesoscutum longer than median ocellar diameter; scape and supraclypeal area without abundant minute, erect to suberect bristles; face below tangent of antennal toruli chestnut brown to dark brown, largely concolorous with the remainder of the head, although sometimes lighter than black of frons; clypeus brown or concolorous with frons; upper frons with dense, minute punctures, such punctures separated by much less than a puncture width and nearly contiguous in some places; discs of metasomal terga III–V with abundant, prominent, erect to subdecumbent, bristles; metasomal terga III–V lacking dense yellow tomentum, but instead typically with diffuse areas of whitish tomentum laterally on discs of terga IV–VI, although these sometimes worn. The subgenus is superficially similar to Baryorygma (vide infra), but differs in the absence of vitreous yellow to yellow facial markings, and the dense punctation of the frons (punctures separated by 1–2× a puncture width in Baryorygma ). Eoscaptotrigona occurs from Nicaragua to southern Brazil, Bolivia, and southern Peru.

ETYMOLOGY: The new name is a combination of the Ancient Greek Ēṓs (Ἠώς, goddess of the dawn, and generally meaning, “early”, as an allusion to these as putatively the earliest-diverging Scaptotrigona ) and Scaptotrigona . The gender of the name is feminine.