THE JOURNAL OF Travaux du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle

Te Narionat museum "Grigore Antipa” 68 (1): 111-115 (2025)
OF NATURAL HISTORY
doi: 10.3897/travaux.68.e121199

FAUNISTIC NOTE

Records of Bombus mastrucatus Gerstaecker, 1869
(Hymenoptera, Apidae) in the Kola Peninsula

Grigory S. Potapov’’, Oleg A. Belyaev’, Yulia S. Kolosova'

1 N. Laverov Federal Center for Integrated Arctic Research of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy
of Sciences, Nikolskiy Ave. 20, Arkhangelsk, 163020, Russia

2 Northern (Arctic) Federal University named after M.V. Lomonosov, Severnaya Dvina Emb. 17,
Arkhangelsk, 163002, Russia

3 Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of Biology, Leninskie Gory 1-12, Moscow, 119234,
Russia

Corresponding author: Grigory S. Potapov (grigorij-potapov@yandex.ru)

Received 19 February 2024 | Accepted 11 November 2024 | Published 30 June 2025

Citation: Potapov GS, Belyaev OA, Kolosova YS (2025) Records of Bombus mastrucatus Gerstaecker, 1869
(Hymenoptera, Apidae) in the Kola Peninsula. Travaux du Muséum National d’ Histoire Naturelle “Grigore Antipa”
68(1): 111-115. https://doi.org/10.3897/travaux.67.e121199

Abstract

We present the records of Bombus mastrucatus Gerstaecker, 1869 in the Murmansk Region (Russia).
We suppose that the distribution of this species in the region is probably limited to the territory from
the vicinity of the town of Kandalaksha to the south of the Kola Peninsula along the Kandalaksha Gulf.

Keywords
Bumblebees, European North, fauna, new records.

Despite the relatively long history of the study of the bumblebee fauna (Hymenoptera:
Apidae: Bombus Latreille, 1802) in the Murmansk Region, there are still many areas
of this region which, due to their inaccessibility, are lacking data on local faunas
(Paukkunen and Kozlov 2015). For this reason, unexpected records of bumblebees
even nowadays are possible. The first author has found Bombus (Alpigenobombus)
mastrucatus Gerstaecker, 1869 in 2016 in the vicinity of the town of Kandalaksha — for
the first time for the Kola Peninsula (Potapov et al. 2018).

Copyright Potapov, Belyaev & Kolosova. This is an open access article distributed under the terms W PENSOFT.
of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

1, Potapov, Belyaev & Kolosova

B. mastrucatus, widespread in Europe, currently is considered as a species separate
from B. wurflenii Radoszkowski, 1860 with a West Asian range (Williams et al. 2023).
This species is typical for the mountainous regions of Scandinavia, Central Europe,
Northern Spain, and the Balkans (Loken 1973; Reinig and Rasmont 1988; Rasmont
et al. 2021; Williams et al. 2023).

From the regions neighboring to the Murmansk Region, the only specimen
(queen) of B. mastrucatus in Northern Finland is known (Suomussalmi Municipality,
Ruhtinansalmi Village, 30.06.1926, leg. O. Sorsakoski). On the base of this specimen,
B. mastrucatus was included in the Finnish checklist of bumblebees by Elfving (1960,
1968). Later, it was removed from the Finnish fauna (S6derman and Vikberg 2002,
Séderman and Leinonen 2003) because of the doubts on the reliability of the label
data of this specimen. Recently, B. mastrucatus has returned to the Finnish checklist
of bumblebees by Paukkunen (2021) after DNA barcoding analysis.

In this paper we present a new record of B. mastrucatus for the Kola Peninsula
and discuss the distribution of this species in the region.

One specimen (queen) (Fig. 1) was collected in the Murmansk Region, the Tersky
District, on the Turiy Cape (66°32’54.6"N, 34°33’48.9"E) (Fig. 2), the territory of
the Kandalaksha Strict Nature Reserve. Leg. Oleg A. Belyaev, 21.V1.2022, during
entomological-botanical excursion for biologist students (in the course of zonality
field studies of Lomonosov Moscow State University). This specimen was identified
(det. Grigory S. Potapov) according to Loken (1973), Rasmont et al. (2021), Williams
et al. (2023). It is deposited in the Russian Museum of Biodiversity Hotspots of the
N. Laverov Federal Center for Integrated Arctic Research of the Ural Branch of the
Russian Academy of Sciences (Arkhangelsk, Russia).

Figure 1. Individual and specimen of Bombus mastrucatus from the Kola Peninsula (Turiy Cape). Scale
bar is 5 mm. Photos: O. A. Belyaev, G. S. Potapov.

Bombus mastrucatus in the Kola Peninsula 113

Figure 2. Habitat of Bombus mastrucatus on the Turiy Cape, i.e., a dwarf shrub pine forest along the
Kandalaksha Gulf. Photo: O. A. Belyaev.

A new record of B. mastrucatus on the Kola Peninsula was made approximately
115 km southeast from the first record of this species in this region (the vicinity of the
town of Kandalaksha, the 26" and 28" of July 2016) (Fig. 3). According to European
authors, B. mastrucatus is mainly associated with the mountain-forest zone (Rasmont
et al. 2021; Williams et al. 2023). Such habitat preference explains its occurrence on
the Kola Peninsula along the Kandalaksha Gulf, where forested low mountains are
widely represented. In 2016 B. mastrucatus was collected by near a side of a road
running along a pine forest (Potapov et al. 2018), in 2022 it was found in a shrubby
pine forest ranging along the sea coast — habitats typical for this species.

According to the available summary of the bumblebee fauna of the Murmansk
Region (Paukkunen and Kozlov 2015), it is unlikely that B. mastrucatus may be found
in the north-west of this region and in the Khibiny Mountains, which are among the
most studied areas. Our studies also confirm this assumption (Potapov and Kolosova
2011; Potapov et al. 2015). The distribution of B. mastrucatus in the Murmansk Region
is probably restricted to the area from the vicinity of Kandalaksha to the south of
the Kola Peninsula along the Kandalaksha Gulf. Further studies should be aimed to
investigate its distribution and ecology in this region.

114 Potapov, Belyaev & Kolosova

Barents|/Sea

Figure 3. Records of Bombus mastrucatus in the Kola Peninsula. The first record near the town of
Kandalaksha in 2016 is marked with a black dot. A red dot is the record on the Turiy Cape in 2022.

Acknowledgements

This study was performed under the framework of the project no. 125021902596-8 of
the Laboratory of the Subarctic Forest Ecosystems of the N. Laverov Federal Center
for Integrated Arctic Research (Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences) and
the project no. 121032300064-0 of the Faculty of Biology of the Lomonosov Moscow
State University. The second author is grateful to Kandalaksha Strict Nature Reserve.
Special thanks to an anonymous reviewer for valuable comments on earlier version
of the manuscript.

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