Trigona laeviceps Smith, 1857

Wood, T. J., Risch, S., Orr, M. C. & Hogan, J. E., 2025, An illustrated type catalogue of the bee species collected by Alfred Russel Wallace and described by Frederick Smith from Southeast Asia (Hymenoptera: Apoidea), European Journal of Taxonomy 1028, pp. 1-144 : 40-42

publication ID	https://doi.org/10.5852/ejt.2025.1028.3129
publication LSID	lsid:zoobank.org:pub:06182A07-5DB6-4916-86AF-673865690CE2
persistent identifier	https://treatment.plazi.org/id/251C1E7D-FFA7-167F-FDF0-145DFC805008
treatment provided by	Plazi
scientific name	Trigona laeviceps Smith, 1857
status

Treatment

22. Trigona laeviceps Smith, 1857 View in CoL

Fig. 23

Trigona laeviceps Smith, 1857: 51 View in CoL , ♀.

Type material examined

Possible holotype

SINGAPORE • ♀; Sing. 82 [Singapore]; [either 25 Sep.–17 Oct. 1854 or 10–17 Feb. 1856]; OUMNH, ENT-HYME2781 .

Type locality

Singapore.

Notes

This species has a complicated taxonomic history. Baker (1993: 197–198) wrote the following:

“Of two ♀♀ standing as laeviceps in the UMO type collection, one bears no labels and the other is labelled ‘Aru’ [white disc] and ‘ Tr. laeviceps Smith. J.Pr.L Soc t 2, p 51 Singapore’ [Westwood’s hand]. The second, Aru [Wallace] specimen, doubtless the basis of Smith’s record in 1869, cannot be regarded as a syntype of laeviceps and has been labelled as of no type status. The status of the label-less specimen is uncertain: it agrees with Smith’s description, so far as that goes, but in the absence of a Wallace locality label or a Smith determination label it would be unwise to assume even that it was before Smith when laeviceps was described.

Fortunately, a third ♀ found among other Trigona in another part of the type collection is authentic laeviceps . It is a Wallace specimen labelled ‘SING. 82’ [white disc] and ‘ Trigona laeviceps . Smith’ [blue paper, Smith], and it agrees with Smith’s description. This specimen has now been labelled as the HOLOTYPE of laeviceps . It is not in clean condition, and is much broken, having lost the L flagellum, both legs II from the femur and R leg III from the trochanter. It is apparently a callow of T. fuscobalteata Cameron, 1908 .

Schwarz (1939: 111), assigning laeviceps as a doubtful synonym to ‘iridipennis variety iridipennis’, made no reference to examination of type material and noted (p. 108) that he was ‘unable to trace structural differences in the workers of fuscobalteata and of iridipennis’. Maa (1961: 208) has: ‘ Trigona laeviceps Smith, 1857 BM-178.1184 is from Mt. Ophir,...’ but this is incorrect and the NHM specimen referred to is a FALSE TYPE. Sakagami (1978: 201) has: ‘Moure ... mentioned that the specimens (of iridipennis sensu Schwarz] from Malaya are larger than those from India and proposed to use T. laeviceps ( type locality, Mt. Ophir, S. Malaya) for the former. This proposition is followed in the present paper.’. This again is wrong, since Mt. Ophir was not the type locality”.

We located the specimen highlighted by Baker, which has been subsequently labelled as of no type status, as argued by Rasmussen & Michener (2010) who designated a neotype in the NHMUK collection (Type 17b, 1184b). The use of the name T. laeviceps over time is somewhat tortuous ( Rasmussen & Michener 2010; Engel et al. 2017; Ascher et al. 2022), and it is not our intention to invalidate the work of previous authors. We present here only the possible holotype specimen so that it is more easily available for revisionary workers dealing with this complex group.

Current status

Tetragonula ( Tetragonula) laeviceps ( Smith, 1857) ( Rasmussen 2008; Rasmussen & Michener 2010; Engel et al. 2017; Ascher et al. 2022).

Distribution

Unclear due to the various species concepts that have been employed ( Rasmussen 2008; Rasmussen & Michener 2010; Engel et al. 2017; Ascher et al. 2022).