About Xylocopa aestuans (Linnaeus, 1758)
Xylocopa aestuans (Linnaeus, 1758), also classified as Xylocopa (Koptortosoma) aestuans, is a species of carpenter bee. It is widely distributed across Southeast Asia, and is a large bee with a total length greater than 20 millimeters. Historically, the taxon Xylocopa pubescens has sometimes been treated as a subspecies of Xylocopa aestuans. These two taxa have separate distinct distributions: X. aestuans is limited to Southeast Asia, while X. pubescens ranges across most of Africa and extends eastward to cover all of South Asia. Both females and males of the two taxa also show very clear, though subtle, morphological differences from one another.
