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Extracted from: TImberlake P. H., (1958). A Revisional Study of The Bees of the Genus Perdita F. Smith, with Special Reference to the Fauna of the Pacific Coast (Hymenoptera, Apoidea) Part III. University of Caifornia Press Berkeley and Los Angeles 1958, Volume 14, No. 5, pp. 303-410, plates 4-15.
The type locality of flavida is Glen, Sioux County, Nebraska, where it was taken on Gutierrezia sarothrae and Solidago missouriensi in August, 1906, by Lawrence Bruner and P. R. Jones. Female specimens of flavida from the type locality are more brassy green, with brighter yellow markings than in typical stottleri, with the legs almost entirely yellow, and the mesoscutum somewhat more closely punctured and hairy. The male differs in the more brassy-green color and the less-developed dark bands of the abdomen. The only male that I have seen from Glen has the mesoscutum more distinctly tessellate than in New Mexico males, although the female is less distinctly tessellate than the type of stottleri. I would include in flavida, however, material in which the females have the mesoscutum more closely punctured and hairy, whether brassy green or blue-green, and the legs almost en tirely yellow, and in which the males have the abdominal bands less developed, with the band at apex of the fourth segment more or less evanescent. Except in the Nebraska male, the mesoscutum generally shows little or no trace of the faint tessellation observable in New Mexico males.
Material from Idaho is perhaps distinctive enough to form another subspecies when better known. Two females from Glenns Ferry have the light markings almost creamy white; in one the supraclypeal area is entirely black and the lateral marks are separated from the clypeus by a dark interval; in the other the usual two supraclypeal spots are confluent and the base of the first tergite is light with a quadrate dark mark on each side of the upper part of the basal declivity. In both, the dark band on pronotum is constricted to a line on upper half of flanks. The females from near Grandview are discolored by cyanide and possibly not so pale- colored as in the above specimens; one has two supraclypeal spots which the other lacks; the latter also has a black spot on each side of the clypeus and the black sutural line between the clypeus and lateral marks is stronger than usual. All these females have the mesoscutum virtually polished, but in accompanying males a faint tessellation is discernible on careful examination.
Two females from Oregon may not belong here, but I cannot dispose of them elsewhere without the male. They are smaller than usual (about 5 mm. long) and one resembles typical stottleri in the dark bands of the abdomen and a dark blotch on the front femora and tibiae, but differs in the entirely yellow hind femora and in the polished and more closely punctured and hairy mesoscutum; the other lacks the dark blotches on the front legs and has the base of the first tergite light, with the dark markings faint and mainly reduced to a small spot on each side near the summit of the basal declivity.
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