A first phylogenetic analysis of Giant Pill‐Millipedes (Diplopoda: Sphaerotheriida), a new model Gondwanan taxon, with special emphasis on island gigantism

Abstract

The phylogeny of the Giant Pill-Millipedes, order Sphaerotheriida, is investigated using a new morphological character matrix comprising 89 characters. The majority of these characters are employed for the first time in millipedes. All trees obtained agree on the monophyletic status of the Sphaerotheriida and several of its tribes, each restricted to a modern land mass. The species from Madagascar displaying island gigantism do not form a monophyletic group. The classic division of Giant Pill-Millipedes into two families, Sphaerotheriidae and Zephronidae, was not reflected in the analysis. The genus Procyliosoma is the sister-group to all other Sphaerotheriida, rendering the family Sphaerotheriidae paraphyletic. A new family-level classification of Giant PillMillipedes, based on the current phylogeny, is introduced.

Integrative description of two new species of Malagasy chirping giant pill-millipedes, genus Sphaeromimus (Diplopoda: Sphaerotheriida: Arthrosphaeridae)

“…We can assume that the ancestral state is a low number of stridulation ribs on the male harp, as seen in other representatives of the family Arthrosphaeridae. In Arthrosphaera the number of stridulation ribs can vary between none and 2 ribs, Microsphaerotherium has one rib and Zoosphaerium has one or two (Wesener & VandenSpiegel 2009). The advantage of a high number of stridulation ribs remains unclear.…”

“…Until 2005 only known from a single specimen, Sphaeromimus was thought to be based on a mislabeled Indian specimen (Jeekel 1999), but then two new species and many specimens were described from SE Madagascar (Wesener & Sierwald 2005). Morphological (Wesener & VandenSpiegel 2009) and molecular (Wesener et al 2010) studies suggest that Sphaeromimus is more closely related to the Indian genus Arthrosphaera Pocock, 1895 than to the other genera in Madagascar. Seven additional species were described integratively in 2014, including the first gigantic species of the genus, reaching the size of a ping-pong ball .…”

“…Madagascar is host to some of the most spectacular millipedes: different genera of large-bodied pitchblack/bloodred so called "Fire-Millipedes" of the order Spirobolida (Wesener et al 2009a(Wesener et al , 2009b(Wesener et al , 2011, as well as the world's largest giant pill-millipedes, order Sphaerotheriida (see Wesener & Wägele 2008;Wesener 2009), showing island gigantism. All giant pill-millipedes of Madagascar belong to the family Arthrosphaeridae, otherwise only found in India (Wesener & VandenSpiegel 2009;Wesener et al 2010) and are an example of the interesting biogeographical history of the Malagasy fauna. All species of the family are characterized by unique stridulation organs present in both sexes (see also Wesener 2014c), the male harp and the female washboard.…”

The Generation of a Biodiversity Hotspot: Biogeography and Phylogeography of the Western Indian Ocean Islands

“…Some invertebrates may also be of vicariant origin on the islands of the western Indian Ocean, such as crayfish (Toon et al 2010), giant pill-millipedes (Wesener, Raupach, and Sierwald 2010;Wesener and VandenSpiegel 2009), migid and archaeid spiders (Griswold and Ledford 2001;Wood, 2008;Wood, Griswold, and Spicer 2007) and Troidini butterflies (Braby, Trueman, and Eastwood 2005). Several groups of plants are also thought to be vicariant 'relicts', evidenced not necessarily by available molecular dates but by shapes of phylogenetic trees (Heads 2009): the Malagasy genus Humbertia, for example, is sister to the presumably old family Concolculaceae, and the genus Takhtajania is sister to Winteraceae (Schatz 1996, cited in Yoder andNowak (2006).…”

Production and Quality of Pill-Millipede Manure: A Microcosm Study

“…The order Sphaerotheriida (pill-millipedes; class, Diplopoda) has four families encompassing about 325 species with wide distribution: (i) Sphaerotheriidae (South Africa); (ii) Procyliosomatidae (Australia and New Zealand); (iii) Arthrosphaeridae (Southern India and Madagascar) and (iv) Zephroniidae (or Sphaeropoeidae) (Seychelles, Southeast Asia and Sundalands) [35,36]. Among the pill-millipedes, the genus Glomeris are confined to temperate regions, Arthrosphaera are distributed in selected tropical habitats, Sphaeromimus and Zoosphaerium are known from Madagascar and Cynotelopus is endemic to the Western Australia [21,27,33,34,36].…”