Description of a new Andrena species from Turkey, Andrena (Notandrena) selcuki n. sp. (Hymenoptera: Apoidea, Andrenidae)

This publication is the first in a series of papers containing the descriptions of Turkish Andrena species that are new to science. Most of the Andrena species found in Turkey were described by Klaus Warncke during the the 1960s and 1970s (Warncke 1966, 1969, 1974, 1975). He described approximately 50% of the Andrena species and subspecies known in Turkey. In his paper of 1975, he recorded 294 species from Turkey, but he often regarded closely related taxa as subspecies of a single species. In our opinion, these subspecies represent separate species, and hence, this number needs to be increased. Since Warncke’s works, no extensive survey of the Andrena of Turkey has been undertaken. However, Gusenleitner (1998) described 9 species from Warncke’s andrenid collection, Patiny (1998), Gusenleitner & Schwarz (2000) and Dubitzky (2006) described one species each, and Grünwaldt (in Grünwaldt, Osytshnjuk & Scheuchl 2005) described two species all from Turkey. Because of Turkey’s climatic and geographic characteristics and its rich and diverse flora, more than 350 Andrena species have evolved and live there. To further assess whether more species occur in Turkey, we initiated an extensive survey on the diversity of pollinator bees in 2005.