Hermosilla’s scientific contributions

... Arguably the most plesiomorphic Ophrys macrospecies, Insectifera (Fly Orchid) was for long universally regarded as a single species, but later it was considered by Delforge [39] and others to contain three microspecies: one widespread and two geographically localised. Each putative species is said to draw its pollinators from a radically different guild of insects: wasps, bees and sawflies, respectively (the sawflies being especially casual in their behaviour; there is no preferred orientation of the fly on the flower, nor is there a preferred location on its body for pollinarium attachment) [11,128]. Sampled Fly Orchid populations demonstrably differed in the very limited sample of three morphological 'traits' that were recorded [59] and also differed subtly in pseudo-pheromone cocktails [129,130], but both plastid and nuclear DNA data constitute "weak but noticeable phylogeographic clustering that correlates only partially with species limits" [25]. ...

Reference:

Morphological Continua Make Poor Species: Genus-Wide Morphometric Survey of the European Bee Orchids (Ophrys L.)

... aveyronensis J.J. Wood (1983), later renamed as Ophrys aveyronensis (J.J. Wood) Delforge (1984), was first described as endemic to the Grands Causses region (southern France). Later, phenotypically similar populations were sporadically discovered in Northern Spain (Hermosilla & Sabando, 1998;Hermosilla & Soca, 1999;Benito Ayuso, 2019). While no clear differences in ecology and pollinator (a solitary bee: Andrena hattorfiana) were found between the French and Iberian populations (Paulus, 2017), these populations have been shown to be diverging, suggesting an early stage of speciation (Gibert et al., 2022 and are currently considered as subspecies: O. a. subsp. ...

Reference:

Floral phenotypic divergence and genomic insights in an Ophrys orchid: unraveling early speciation processes