Bombus melanopoda : a British bumblebee on a Sumatran mountain?

Le résumé fourni par la source

The bumblebee taxon Bombus melanopoda Cockerell is known only from the holotype female. Confusion had arisen because the holotype of B. melanopoda is labelled ‘Sumatra’, appears in the Natural History Museum (NHM) accession catalogue as originating from there, and is similar in its near-all-black colour pattern of the hair to many individuals of both of the other bumblebee species known from Sumatra: B. rufipes Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau and B. senex Snellen van Vollenhoven. However, a COI barcode obtained from this individual is identical to another from the European species B. ruderatus (Fabricius) and the morphology matches that of many British females of B. ruderatus. Therefore, B. melanopoda is synonymised here with B. ruderatus (syn. n.). This is a salutary tale for not accepting data labels at face value without question and demonstrates again the value of COI barcodes.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.