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Photo#1277781
Sonora Pass Pollen Wasp - Pseudomasaris zonalis - female

Sonora Pass Pollen Wasp - Pseudomasaris zonalis - Female
A few kilometers north of Sonora Pass, Alpine County, California, USA
July 26, 2016
Found at about 10,160' elevation on the south flank of Sonora Peak, a few kilometers up the trail north of Sonora Pass. Growing nearby were both Hydrophyllum occidentale and Phacelia hastata ssp. compacta...both were in flower, though the latter was more abundant.

Using the (virtually identical) keys in Richards(1963) and Richards(1966), this goes to either Pseudomasaris zonalis (if you go, at lead 3, with "Mid femur flattened beneath and with a more or less distinct anteroventral ridge, distinctly wider at base than at apex"), or to P. macneilli (if you go with ""Mid femur rounded beneath with no anteroventral ridge, scarcely wider at base than at apex"). In Bohart's description of P. macneilli, appearing on on pg. 292 of Richards(1963), the following data is given:

"Holotype male.—Near Sonora Peak (above Sonora Pass), Tuolumne County, California, 11,000 feet elevation, July 14, 1957 (C. D. MacNeill, C.A.S., San Francisco).
On the same page, Richards' discussion of P. macneilli includes the following:

"In Sonora Pass, on June 29, 1961, I found this species to be not very common, at about 10,000 feet on the Tuolumne side, on or around flowers of Hydrophyllum. This was on the sunny east-facing side of a small valley on the north of the road and no other species was present. On the next day, rather more than a thousand feet lower down, P. zonalis (Cresson) was visiting the flowers of Phacelia frigida Greene, on the edge of the road. In 1960, between August 10 and 18, a party from the University of California (Davis and Berkeley campuses) collected on Sonora Pass. They obtained 7 males and 55 females of P. zonalis, but earlier (June 26, 1960) Mr. R. W. Thorp obtained one female of P. macneilli (now in his collection)."
And Richards adds:

"P. macneilli [...] could, in the female, be confused with P. zonalis, especially since the anteroventral ridge on the femur of the last-named species is not always conspicuous. P. macneilli, however, is larger, yellower (especially beneath the gaster), and has longer, hairs and shorter propodeal spines."
In light of Richards comments quoted above, comparing the description of P. macneilli in Richards(1963) with the original description of P. zonalis, I couldn't come up with a clearly discernible character in my photos to distinguish which of the two species we have here (though the description of the coxae and trochanters being black for zonalis vs. with yellow spots for macneilli seems to favor the former here a bit). Since Richards comments indicated zonalis was the more commonly encountered species, and its August 10 collection date is closer to my observation date than Robbin Thorp's June 26 collection of macneilli, I guess zonalis is the most likely ID here. But this might be P. macneilli...I can't say for sure.

Images of this individual: tag all
Sonora Pass Pollen Wasp - Pseudomasaris zonalis - female Sonora Pass Pollen Wasp - Pseudomasaris zonalis - female Sonora Pass Pollen Wasp - Pseudomasaris zonalis - female

Tentative ID
Ok, I've been staring at these images for 2 years now trying to decide between zonalis and macneilli and have tentatively decided on Ps. zonalis.

I have a female paratype for macneilli and a lot of zonalis to compare with.

The paratype female has the coxae and trochanters black, so I imagine Bohart just failed to note that difference in the females. The hair is thicker in macneilli, but that's not much use here. I think this individual is a bit wider than most zonalis, but that's hard to judge from images.

What finally got me is the yellow around the eyes reaches the ocelli (like in coquilletti) and the yellow on the frons is less triangular in the macneilli paratype. The humeral angle looks more distinct in your individual than in macneilli. My ID is mostly based on color, which is variable in zonalis and likely in macneilli too, so it is tentative.

I also have the metatype from Utah, but I'm pretty confident that's an undescribed species so isn't much use here.

I really wanted it to be a macneilli!!

Moved
Moved from Pseudomasaris.

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