In a group of its own? Rediscovery of one of the world's rarest and highest mountain bumblebees, Bombus tanguticus. Issue 5 (9th February 2018) - Williams, Paul H.
Abstract : The distinctive, large bumblebee Bombus tanguticus Morawitz was described from yellow-banded queens (females) collected from high elevations on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) by Nikolay Przhevalsky's fourth Central Asia expedition. One of Morawitz's syntype females is designated here as lectotype. Because of the distinctive female morphology, Pittioni placed the species in a subgenus of its own, Tanguticobombus . Surprisingly, in the 130 years since its description, and despite extensive sampling of bumblebees across the QTP, records for just seven more individuals of B. tanguticus have been published, all queens. In this paper I report two recently collected workers (females) that extend the known distribution of the species and describe a new white-banded colour pattern from one of the workers. Available data on the species' distribution are mapped, the location of the collecting site for the highest confirmed records of any bumblebees worldwide at c . 5640 m above sea level is discussed, and the closest relatives of the species identified, placing it in the lapidarius -group of the subgenus Melanobombus and most likely close to the European B. lapidarius .