Contributions to the taxonomy of the genus Hylaeus in India, with an identification key and a new species (Hymenoptera: Colletidae)

First record of a rare masked bee Hylaeus (Indialaeus) strenuus (Cameron, 1897) from south India with an updated checklist of Hylaeus species (Hymenoptera, Colletidae)

“…Identification of bees followed original descriptions and keys (Cameron, 1897;Dathe, 2011;Saini et al, 2021). For external morphological studies, a Nikon SMZ 800N microscope was used.…”

“…Voucher specimens from this study are deposited in the Insect Museum, Department of Entomology, University of Agricultural Sciences, Gandhi Krishi Vignana Kendra, Bangaluru Karnataka, India. The checklist along with geographical distribution data of species was prepared by extracting published faunal records (Cameron, 1897;Dathe, 2010;Dathe, 2011;Magnacca et al, 2011;Saini et al, 2021) and world checklist (Ascher and Pickering, 2023). Mapinfo Professional 7.5SCP was used for generating the distribution map of species.…”

“…Hylaeus bees are poorly known from the Oriental region in general Dathe, 2011;Magnacca et al, 2011). According to Ascher and Pickering (2023), though there are about 768 species of the genus Hylaeus worldwide only 18 species are recorded from India, six of which occur in south India (Saini et al, 2021).…”