Pierre Rasmont
Atlas of the European Bees: genus Cubitalia

First on line 13.XII.2014

Cubitalia is a small genus that only counts 8 known species, one of these only living in Central Asia, the others in West-Palaearctic. They are mainly living in the Near-Orient, while one species reach Central Europe.

As they are rare, few is known about their way of life. Most flower visits are recorded on Boraginaceae.

The taxonomy of Eucerini remains one of the most obscure in the Apoidea. The tribe counts a large number of genera and species in the whole world. The classical reference for the West-Palaearctic taxa is still Friese (1895). The classical systematics only counted 2 genera: the one with 2 submarginal cells (Eucera) and the one with 3 (Tetralonia, =Macrocera). Michener (2000, 2007) redrawn the generic limits of these taxa as follow: the Palaearctic species with 3 submarginal cells are included in the genera Tetralonia (one species in West-Palaearctic), Tetraloniella and Eucera subg. Synhalonia (around 50 species). most of the Palaearctic species with 2 submarginal cells (maybe 100 species) are included in the genus Eucera, the few remaining being Cubitalia.

Cubitalia has been considered as a subgenus of Eucera (Risch 1999). Then Pesenko & Sitdikov (1990) erected them as a genus. Michener (2000, 2007) subdivided the genus in 3 subgenera: Cubitalia s.s., Opacula Pesenko & Sitdikov (from Central Asia) and Pseudeucera Tkalcu.

There is no synthetic publication that allows to identify all species of the genus, most taxa having been described after Friese (1895). Most of the species of the subg. Cubitalia s.s. could be identified by using Tkalcu (1984). The only species present in Central Europe could be identified with Friese (1895) or Iuga (1958) (as Eucera parvicornis). For the remaining, one should rely to the original descriptions.

This first version of the Atlas of Cubitalia includes all available literature data.

As most of the Eucerini, Cubitalia are silent fast flyers, the males being nearly invisible when they search for females (most of the times). That explain why there are so few photographs of living specimens.

This page is constructed in the framework of the STEP project.
Status and Trends of European Pollinators
Coordinator: Simon Geoffrey Potts, University of Reading

STEP Partners to Objective 1 (Document the status and trends of pollinators, map distributions):
University of Mons (Prof. Pierre Rasmont; Denis Michez; Stephanie Iserbyt; Yvan Barbier)
University of Reading (Stuart Roberts)

Pierre Rasmont

Citation:
Rasmont P. 2014. Atlas of the European Bees: genus Cubitalia. 1st Edition. STEP Project, Atlas Hymenoptera, Mons, Gembloux. http://www.atlashymenoptera.net/page.aspx?ID=281

Other Eucerini

Cubitalia (present page)
Eucera
Tetralonia
Tetraloniella