RUFOCINCTUS (Red-belted Bumble Bee)
Red-belted Bumble Bee (Bombus rufocinctus)
RUFOCINCTUS 3
Bombus rufocinctus (subg. Cullumanobombus)
IDENTIFICATION: SIMPLE TO DIFFICULT
PREVALENCE: UNCOMMON
Rufocinctus is an uncommon bumble bee of NWO and but is likely to be encountered with regular sampling. In the collection by Harris et al. in prep, rufocinctus made up just 1% of the overall collection. Rufocinctus can be highly variable but in our region typically shows yellow on T1-T2 followed by orange on T3-T4. It's thorax colouration is typically similar to vagans and sandersoni, a bald spot approaching a black stripe. For the most part, a standard rufocinctus is easily identifiable by a simple overtop photograph. Unfortunately, rufocinctus also has a black variant that shows yellow on T1 and T2 and then black on T3-T6 making it look identical to vagans and sandersoni. In these cases, the very short cheek of rufocinctus is the identifying feature but may be hard to distinguish from the short cheek of sandersoni. In these cases, overtop and side of head photographs may help identify rufocinctus effectively, or not. Males are similar to females and highly variable.
Sources and Credits
- (c) Bill Greaves, all rights reserved, uploaded by Bill Greaves
- (c) hobiecat, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by hobiecat
- Adapted by Bill Greaves from a work by (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombus_rufocinctus
