New Chilopoda from the Chagos Archipelago

Abstract

ABSTRACT The single published record of centipedes from the Chagos Archipelago, British Indian Ocean Territory, is for the scolopendrid Rhysida longipes Newport, 1845, from Eagle Island. Recent collections from Diego Garcia atoll include new records of R. longipes as well as four other centipede species, including the first records of the orders Lithobiomorpha and Geophilomorpha. A new species of the lithobiid Australobius Chamberlin, 1920, A. chagosensis sp. n., is closely allied to species described from southern India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The henicopid Lamyctes is represented by two geographically widespread species, L. mauriesi Demange, 1981 and L. tristani (Pocock, 1893), from which sequence data for the COI barcode marker are presented and analysed phylogenetically. The types of Lamyctes albipes (Pocock, 1894), and L. tristani, from Java and Tristan da Cunha, respectively, are illustrated for the first time to facilitate taxonomic comparisons with Chagos material. Specimens of Mecistocephalus are identified as Mecistocephalus lohmanderi Verhoeff, 1939, closely resembling specimens from the Seychelles. Collections from the archipelago in 1971–1972 also included Mecistocephalus angusticeps (Ribaut, 1914), and Nycternyssa dekania dekania (Verhoeff, 1938). The Chagos centipede fauna reveals affinities to those of the southern Indian Subcontinent, East Africa, Madagascar, the Maldives, the Seychelles, and Java. http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:52337A1E-95DF-46C5-9D9A-8F294968A89D