Order PROTURA

Protura

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Order PROTURA

Proturans

Compiler and date details

31 December 1993 - W.W.K. Houston, Australian Biological Resources Study, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

Introduction

Protura are very small (<2 mm in length), elongate, delicate and usually unpigmented hexapods. They are known from all zoogeographic regions. Primitively wingless, they lack eyes, antennae and cerci, and the fore legs are modified for sensory purposes. Their mouth-parts are adapted for sucking and they have been observed feeding on both mycorhizoid and free soil hyphae (Sturm 1959; Nosek 1973).

Protura may be quite common, but are rarely seen. They are cryptic and occur in damp situations, such as in soil, moss, peat, leaf litter, and under bark and decaying wood. They are associated with high levels of organic matter and are more commonly recorded from forest habitats. Raw (1956) reported that they are a significant part of the arthropod fauna of agricultural soils. They can be separated from litter or soil by the use of Tullgren funnels or by flotation (e.g. Southwood 1966; Upton 1991).

Juveniles resemble adults and development is anamorphic. Bernard (1976) provided observations on eggs and embryology and showed that the prelarva is the first postembryonic stage. Aldaba (1985) described some prelarvae from Spain and Bernard & Tuxen (1987) provided a key to the families of proturan juveniles and described each stage.

The order was first recognised by Silvestri (1907), when he described Acerentomon doderoi and related it to the insects. Berlese (1909), in a monograph on the order, considered that Protura are closely related to the myriapods and called them Myrientomata. The class and order Protura is now placed, as the sister group to the Collembola, in the Ellipura (=Parainsecta) which is recognised as the sister group to the Insecta (Kristensen 1991; Kukalová-Peck 1991).

Imadaté (1991), based on the views of Tuxen (1963, 1964) and Imadaté (1966), divided the Protura into two superfamilies, the Eosentomoidea and the Acerentomoidea, each with two families. This classification is followed in the Catalogue.

Nosek (1973) erected a new suborder, Sinentomoidea, for the aberrant Chinese Proturan Sinentomon erythranum Yin. Tuxen (1977b), however, discussed the phylogenetic position of Sinentomon and considered that it belongs in the Protentomidae.

Yin (1983, 1984) considered the Acerentomoidea, which she divided into eight families, were the primitive group and the Eosentomoidea the more specialised group. Although Yin's classification is not used by Imadaté (1991), Imadaté states that it is supported by recent ultrastructure studies on proturan spermatozoa.

Yin (1992) and Yin & Xué (1993) proposed a new classification of the proturan families, again not followed by Imadaté (1994) as yet another classification was in preparation by Yin (Imadaté pers. comm.).

Phylogenetic trends in the Protura were discussed by Tuxen (1963) and information on Protura was consolidated by Tuxen (1964) in his monograph on the world fauna. In this work, he revised the phylogeny and also gave keys to the species described up to 1961. Manton discussed the systematics of Protura in her studies on mandibular mechanisms (1964) and on locomotory mechanisms (1972). Francois (et al. 1992) examined the cephalic anatomy of S. erythranum and compared them with other Protura and Apterygota.

Descriptive and other accounts of the proturan fauna of the world are mainly by country or region. Some of these areas, and works which describe their fauna and/or give a useful lead into the relevant literature, include: catalogue of the world fauna (Paclt 1955); monograph on the world fauna (Tuxen 1964); keys and diagnoses to world genera (Nosek 1978); Hawaii (Zimmerman 1948); Portugal (Cunha 1952); Japan (Imadaté & Yosii 1959; Imadaté 1964, 1974, 1994); Uganda (Condé 1961a); SE Asia (Imadaté 1965); Australia (Tuxen 1967); Europe (Nosek 1973); Bismarck Archipelago and Solomon Islands (Tuxen & Imadaté 1975a); Brazil (Tuxen 1976); Angola and Nigeria (Tuxen 1977a); Kermadec Islands (Ramsey & Tuxen 1978); Madeira (Tuxen 1982); New Zealand (Tuxen 1985); N America—Eosentomon (Bernard 1985, 1990); Korea (Lee & Rim 1988); Poland (Szeptycki & Weiner 1990); and China (Yin 1992).

The presence of Protura in Australia was first reported by Dakin & Fordham (1926) but the samples were lost and their identification was not confirmed. Six years later, Womersley (1932) described six new species. He described another species in 1936. In a review of the Australian fauna, Womersley (1939) described a subspecies (later raised to species level), identified an Australian species—later accorded separate species status by Bonet (1942)—as a North American species, and gave a key to the families and subfamilies of Protura. The major worker on the Australian fauna, however, was Tuxen, who reviewed the fauna and described a further 16 species (Tuxen 1967). Tuxen & Imadaté (1975b) described a further two species. Tuxen (1967) and Nosek (1973) discussed the distinct zoogeographical position of the Australian Protura.

Several species, probably introduced into Australia, were described from material collected outside Australia. They are Acerentulus confinis (Berlese 1908), Gracilentulus gracilis (Berlese 1908) and Protentomon perpusillum (Berlese 1909) described from Italy; and Berberentulus capensis (Womersley 1931) described from South Africa. Prabhoo (1960) inadvertently published details of Baculentulus breviunguis (Prabhoo), a species known from India, that was subsequently described by Condé (1961b).

The proturan fauna of Australia is poorly known. Three families, 10 genera and 32 described species are recorded from Australia; at least four of the species are probably introduced. There has been little recent work on the fauna and extensive collecting, ecological work, and taxonomic revision is needed. Species in existing collections await description and undoubtedly further collecting will increase significantly the total number of species recorded from Australia.

Acknowledgements

Preparation of this database, a section of the Zoological Catalogue of Australia, was undertaken as part of the author's work within the Zoological Catalogue Section of the Australian Biological Resources Study. I would like to thank Professor G. Imadaté and Professor E. C. Bernard for comments on the manuscript; Ms P. Greenslade for assistance with bibliographic and distribution data; the ANIC for access to types; and the librarians at the CSIRO Black Mountain Library for their help with locating many references.

Database Notes

The information on the Australian Faunal Directory site for the Protura is derived from the Zoological Catalogue of Australia database compiled on the Platypus software program. It incorporates changes made to the work published on 21 November 1994 as (Houston, W.W.K., 1994)

Limital Area

Distribution data in the Directory is by political and geographic region descriptors and serves as a guide to the distribution of a taxon. For details of a taxon's distribution, the reader should consult the cited references (if any) at genus and species levels.

Australia is defined as including Lord Howe Is., Norfolk Is., Cocos (Keeling) Ils, Christmas Is., Ashmore and Cartier Ils, Macquarie Is., Australian Antarctic Territory, Heard and McDonald Ils, and the waters associated with these land areas of Australian political responsibility. Political areas include the adjacent waters.

Terrestrial geographical terms are based on the drainage systems of continental Australia, while marine terms are self explanatory except as follows: the boundary between the coastal and oceanic zones is the 200 m contour; the Arafura Sea extends from Cape York to 124 DEG E; and the boundary between the Tasman and Coral Seas is considered to be the latitude of Fraser Island, also regarded as the southern terminus of the Great Barrier Reef.

Distribution records, if any, outside of these areas are listed as extralimital. The distribution descriptors for each species are collated to genus level. Users are advised that extralimital distribution for some taxa may not be complete.