Revision of the bee genus Heriades Spinola, 1808 (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae: Osmiini) for México and Central America

The insects of the superfamily Apoidea, commonly known as bees are divided into seven families. The Megachilidae family are mainly solitary bees, easily recognize by their long mouth parts, metasomal sternal scopa and a rectangular labrum, longer than broad. The bee genus Heriades are solitary bees from the Megachilidae family. It’s a monophyletic group divided into eight subgenera, from which Neotrypetes is the only one distributed in America. There are only 14 formally recognize species, distributed from Canada to north Colombia. These are small bees, with short fly capacity and strongly depend on cavities in twigs made by other insects for their nests as well as the surrounding flowers to provide them. They played an important role in the pollinations of wild plants with small flowers in natural ecosystems. Due to their small size, low density of populations and dark colors, they are often ignored in the field and have been formally revised only twice in 1938 by Charles Michener and 1984 by Terry Griswold.

A taxonomic revision of the genus was carried out in the geographical extension of Mexico and Central America. 33 species was recognized, identifying 19 new to science, using morphological characters, particularly male genitalia. We propose the first hypothesis of phylogenetic relationships among the genus in the Continent. The results showed an enormous richness of the genus, particularly tropical areas of México. This work highlights the great importance of taxonomic research as a basis for the study of biological diversity, especially in poorly studied countries.