Osmia (Helicosmia) latreillei (SPINOLA, 1806)

Renter; Existing cavities: insect burrows in dead wood and drilled borings in wooden blocks; hollow stems (e.g. Arundo, Phragmites); insect burrows in the soil (e.g. from Proxylocopa, Anthophora).

Nesting material: Cell partitions and nest plug are made of chewed leaves (e.g. from Lavatera). The nest plug occasionally consists of several walls of leaf pulp, sometimes particles (e.g. pieces of grass blades) are glued to its outer surface. Krombein (1969) states that partitions and plug are usually made of masticated leaf pulp, but that one plug had a layer of mud sandwiched between two layers of leaf pulp, and that another plug had some thin interspersed layers of wood-pulp fragments from the sides of the boring and the outer end plastered with a thin layer of mud. These last observations are probably wrong and concern other species than O. latreillei, which is supported by the list of pollen sources given which do not correspond to the normal host plants of O. latreillei. (Ferton, 1905; Krombein, 1969; O’Toole and Raw, 1991; Vicens, Bosch and Blas, 1993; Wafa and El-Berry, 1971; G. Le Goff, personal observation)

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