New Millipede Family Discovered in Australia
Posted on August 30, 2012
A new group of millipedes previously unknown in Australia has been discovered. These millipedes were discovered by a specialist on museum shelves. Hundreds of tiny specimens of the family Pyrgodesmidae have been found among bulk samples in two museums. The findings indicate that native pyrgodesmids are widespread in Australia's tropical and subtropical forests. Six new species and three new genera of the millipedes have now been described from Australia, all from the state of Queensland.
Millipede specialist Dr Robert Mesibov, of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania, says, "Most pyrgodesmid species are so small they could be easily overlooked. What's interesting is how thoroughly overlooked they've been. We now know there are dozens of native species of these millipedes in our warm, wet forests, stretching over more than 2000 km on Australia's east coast."
Dr. Mesibov also says, "It's a great example of the value of museum collections. Scientists from the Queensland Museum and CSIRO Entomology collected bagfuls of leaf litter in hundreds of places over many years. They extracted bugs in bulk from the fresh litter and took out just the ones they were studying, usually beetles. The remaining bugs are in 'residues' stored in the Queensland Museum and the Australian National Insect Collection. Sure, biological expeditions to previously unexplored places turn up exciting new species. But there are plenty of surprises waiting when you go rummaging through the residues on museum shelves. In this case, it was a whole family of animals not known from Australia."
Here is the head end of one of the new pyrgodesmid species.
The study has been published here in the open access journal ZooKeys.