Identificaciones de tonuferko

This is a 12 mm female Florida long-horn cuckoo bee (Triepeolus rufithorax), found feeding on snow squarestem (Melanthera nivea).

This is a predominantly black bee with patterns on its upper thorax and abdomen formed by dense, short yellowish hairs. The following parts of the bee are red: its legs (including the coxae); tegulae; pronotal lobes; much of the scutellum; the axillar spines; the apical edge of the clypeus; the bases of the mandibles; the labrum; and the lower antennae (scapes, pedicels, F1 & part of F2). It does not have the red scutum (first thorax segment) typical of male Florida longhorn cuckoo bees like that shown here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/223844342.

Rightmyer (2008) describes Triepeolus rufithorax as a black bee that tends to have red on the upper thorax and abdomen, and on the following parts: the legs, mandibles, labrum, clypeus, interantennal area (sometimes), and basal or entire antennae (pp. 113-114). Rightmyer notes that Triepeolus lunatus and T. rufithorax are similar, and that “the only notable difference between the two species is the greater amount of red coloration on the thorax in T. rufithorax" (p.80). Nonetheless, she mentions in her Triepeolus key that the scutum of the female is typically or usually red but “sometimes partially or entirely black” (pp. 20, 22).