Australian Biological Resources Study

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Family SCOLOPENDRIDAE

Introduction

The Scolopendridae include all the large centipedes. Among them is Scolopendra gigantea, the largest centipede in the world, at 300 mm dwarfing the smallest member of the family which measures only 35 mm. Scolopendrids have a rhomboid cluster of four ocelli and may be coloured yellow, brown, orange, green or red; some species exhibit black or dark blue markings. The final pair of legs may be highly modified, forming grasping appendages (Hoffmann 1982: 684).

This family is divided into two subfamilies: the Otostigminae (8 genera, 150 species) and the Scolopendrinae (20 genera, 200 species), both distributed predominantly throughout the tropics, including Australia and the southern part of the Northern Hemisphere (Hoffmann 1982: 684). Nine genera and 40 described species are recorded for Australia. Three undescribed species have been reported.

The systematics and taxonomy of Australian scolopendrid centipedes has been the subject of a series of papers by L.E. Koch. These include morphological, phylogenetic and zoogeographic studies as well as taxonomic treatments of Australian species of the genera Cormocephalus, Ethmostigmus, Arthrorhabdus, Rhysida and Scolopendra (Koch 1983; Koch & Burgman 1984; Koch & Colless 1986).

Database Notes

Koch, 1983a provides a key to the Australian genera of Scolopendridae.

 

History of changes

Note that this list may be incomplete for dates prior to September 2013.
Published As part of group Action Date Action Type Compiler(s)
12-Feb-2010 (import)