The millipedes collected by the Museum "La Specola" on Madagascar 1989/1991, with the description of three new species of giant pill-millipedes (Diplopoda, Sphaerotheriida, Arthrosphaeridae)

Abstract

A large collection of millipedes (Diplopoda) from Madagascar, belonging to the Museum “La Specola” in Florence, Italy were investigated. The collection includes three new species of the giant pill-millipede genus Zoosphaerium Pocock, 1895 which are described here as Zoosphaerium mangabe Wesener, sp. nov., Z. bartolozzii Anilkumar & Wesener, sp. nov., and Z. taitii Anilkumar & Wesener, sp. nov., all belonging to the Z. coquerelianum species group. The latter two are currently only known from a single site. Other specimens belonging to eight orders (Polyxenida, Sphaerotheriida, Polyzoniida, Siphonophorida, Chordeumatida, Polydesmida, Spirobolida, and Spirostreptida) are listed. Three tropical tramp species, Pseudospirobolellus avernus (Butler, 1876), Glyphiulus granulatus Gervais, 1847, and Chondromorpha xanthotricha (Attems, 1898) are recorded for the first time from Madagascar. New locality data is provided for Zoosphaerium neptunus (Butler, 1872), Z. villosum Wesener & Sierwald, 2005, Z. blandum (de Saussure & Zehntner, 1897), Sphaeromimus musicus (de Saussure & Zehntner, 1897), Rhinotus purpureus (Pocock, 1894), Hylekobolus andasibensis Wesener, 2009, Aphistogoniulus infernalis Wesener, 2009, Ostinobolus rufus Wesener, 2009, Ostinobolus subterraneus Wesener, 2009, Dactylobolus bivirgatus (Karsch, 1881), and Eumekius antimena (de Saussure & Zehntner, 1901).

Seven new giant pill-millipede species and numerous new records of the genus Zoosphaerium from Madagascar (Diplopoda, Sphaerotheriida, Arthrosphaeridae)

“…The entire dataset was translated into amino acids to rule out the accidental amplification of pseudogenes. Fifteeen additional COI sequences representing seven different species of Zoosphaerium described in previous studies (Wesener et al 2010a;Sagorny & Wesener 2017;Wesener & Anilkumar 2020) were downloaded from GenBank. Moreover, two sequences of the closely related Malagasy genus Sphaeromimus (Wesener & Sierwald 2005b;Wesener et al 2014;Moritz & Wesener 2017) as a near outgroup and one sequence of the basal (Wesener & VandenSpiegel 2009;Wesener 2014) Sphaerotheriida family Procyliosomatidae as a far outgroup were added to the dataset.…”

“…See Wesener (2016) for a summary; five additional species have been described since then (Sagorny & Wesener 2017;Wesener & Anilkumar 2020).…”

“…The speciesgroup now contains 23 described species distributed in humid to subhumid forests all over Madagascar. Species of this group are conspicuously absent from the spiny forest ecosystem and the western dry forest Wesener et al 2010b;Sagorny & Wesener 2017;Wesener & Anilkumar 2020). Zoosphaerium ambatovaky sp.…”

Integrative description of new giant pill-millipedes from southern Thailand (Diplopoda, Sphaerotheriida, Zephroniidae)

“…Only future studies, once females of the species become available from the type locality, or male specimens from Khao Luang, will show if the 6.1% correspond to intra-or interspecific distances. The observed interspecific distances of the two new Thai Zephroniidae species towards related species are slightly higher (minimum 16.8%) than those observed in giant pill-millipedes from Madagascar, where the species of Sphaeromimus de Saussure & Zehntner, 1902 show interspecific distances of 8.3-20.8% (Wesener et al 2014;Moritz & Wesener 2017), while the interspecific distances in the less well-sampled genus Zoosphaerium are 9.1-20% (Sagorny & Wesener 2017;Wesener & Anilkumar 2020;Wesener & Sagorny 2021). One reason behind the large interspecific distances in our two new species from southern Thailand might be that their closest relatives have not been discovered or sampled yet.…”

Ecotone shifts in southern Madagascar: first barcoding data and six new species of the endemic millipede genus Riotintobolus (Spirobolida, Pachybolidae)

“…In Sphaeromimus , whose species show a distribution restricted to southern Madagascar comparable to those of Riotintobolus , interspecific distances vary mainly between 8.3–20.8% ( Wesener et al 2014 ; Moritz and Wesener 2017 ). In the widespread genus Zoosphaerium , only a handful of species were sequenced (Wesener et al 2010; Sagorny and Wesener 2017 ; Wesener and Anilkumar 2020 ), with interspecific distances varying between 9.1–16.3%.…”