Euryglossa adelaidae

A native bee at Red Hill, ACT

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Identification history

	Euryglossa adelaidae	28 Feb 2022	michael.batley
	Lipotriches sp. (genus)	25 Feb 2022	Roger

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User's notes

I have no idea what this little bee is, I couldn't find any images that matched.

6 comments

michael.batley wrote:

27 Feb 2022

Hi Roger, have a look at images of Euryglossa terminata in PaDIL and see whether you could convince yourself that the bee was at least 10 mm long. It would be really nice to find a male of that species, but to date my searching has been unsuccessful.

Roger wrote:

27 Feb 2022

Hi Michael, I have just been looking at James Dorey's book Bees of Australia, could this bee be Euryglossa Adelaidae, seaching for the male might be a problem as I think the flowers on the eucalypt have probaby gone due to the rain. I got the feeling that this bee was quite small abdomen 6/7mm

Roger wrote:

27 Feb 2022

Hi Michael, I have had a look at PaDIL and it certaintly looks simular, the only difference I can see is that the yellow piece between the thorax and the head is missing in the image in PaDAIL, or is that because the way that the bee is positioned.

michael.batley wrote:

27 Feb 2022

The yellow bit is just connective tissue. We might loosely call it the "neck". A lot of Euryglossa species have colour forms ranging from all black to mostly orange-brown with intermediate forms in which random parts of the body are orange-brown. The features that distinguish one species from another do not show up in most photographs. One exception to this are males of Euryglossa adelaidae which have orange antennae and an abdomen with pale terminal margins to the segments that create a distinctly banded appearance and males of a few other species that have distinctive antennae.

michael.batley wrote:

28 Feb 2022

Thanks Roger. From two of the photos I got the same estimate of body length which was 8.5 mm. Euryglgossa terminata has been found with a 10 mm body length but is usually closer to 15 mm, so the bee in the pictures is not terminata. Although E. adelaidae is usually about 7.5 mm long, the size estimate is just that - an estimate - and I think we should call it E. adelaidae. There is nothing in the photos that would indicate otherwise.

Roger wrote:

28 Feb 2022

Thanks for that, its really good to get a positve ID. I have another one for you which I'm going to put on CNM. The Images were taken in our garden where I usually see serricauda, but this little bee is smaller than serricauda, again I dont know what it is, it looks like aurifrons without the red eyes, size probably 7mm head and thorax out of preportion to it's body, no orange on the body.

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