#sidalcea

Pretty pink prairie mallow, Sidalcea ‘Sussex Beauty’

Pink prairie mallow (Sidalcea) flowers and seed pods

Prairie Mallow (Sidalcea) Flowers

(By K. James Hung)

My friends are often surprised when I tell them that there are at least 600 bee species in San Diego and over 20,000 in the world. “How do you tell them apart?” some would ask. “With lots and lots of practice,” is often the answer. While different bee species of the same genus may often be extremely difficult to tell apart from one another, it is usually much more straightforward to tell apart bees belonging to different genera. Of course, this phenomenon has its exceptions, too.

The bee pictured above is a female Tetraloniella davidsoni, a member of the bee tribe Eucerini. As far as I understand, almost all bee genera under the tribe Eucerini are simply referred to as “long-horned bees” without any other common names (except for the genera Peponapis and Xenoglossa, which are referred to as “Squash bees.”). Members of the tribe  are oftentimes extremely difficult to distinguish from one another, leading some authors to lump many groups together into a few genera, and other authors to split groups apart into many more genera (this lumping vs. splitting is a perennial problem in taxonomy research). Long-horned bees are represented by species all over the world, and, like the Tetraloniella pictured above, most are generally robust, hairy bees.

The bee pictured above is the male of Tetraloniella davidsoni. Aha! That’s why tribe Eucerini is nicknamed “long-horned bees!” In the majority of species, males have greatly elongated antennae, presumably to help them locate females. It is interesting to note that I photographed both of the above specimens on checkerbloom mallow (Sidalcea spp.), since other authors have guessed that this species may be a specialist on plants in the sunflower (Asteraceae) family (i.e., they may obtain the majority of their pollen from sunflowers). To my knowledge, Tetraloniella davidsoni falls in the category of “data deficient;” we really don’t know quite enough about the biology this species to say anything definite about it. That’s one of the things that make me excited about my work—filling in the little gaps in human knowledge about our world! :)

 Also I’m going to start adding mini-bio for the bees I introduce, starting with this one. If I get enough free time, I will retroactively add them for ones I posted before, too.

Tetraloniella davidsoni (Cockerell, 1905)

Family: Apidae

Tribe: Eucerini

Active season: March through May

Range: Baja California and Southern California (including the Northern Channel Islands, as I discovered last year—the female photographed above is actually the first documentation of this genus on the islands!)

Floral preferences: Unknown; perhaps specialist on Asteraceae, but evidently likes to hang out in Sidalcea too.