Millipedes are among the oldest known terrestrial critters known to have creeped about the landscape. They are important nutrient cyclers, detritivores of leaf litter and woody debris. Millipedes have no venom, they don’t sting, I’ve never known them to bite. Instead, most millipedes rely on a cocktail of defensive secretions to keep them safe as they graze among the decomposing forest floor. They like cool and damp environments with plenty of forest litter, so it comes as no surprise that they are abundant and biodiverse in the temperate rain-forests of the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the North America. A recent paper in Zootaxa describes 33 new species and seven new genera of millipedes from the PNW in the family Conotylidae. These millipedes are all small (about 1.5 cm), and are superficially similar looking — the species are primarily differentiated by the size of their hair-baring “shoulders” (metazonital dorsolateral paranota) and the male genitalia (modified legs called gonopods).
The new species and genera described in this paper are primarily from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, but also from California, Nevada, Montana, and in Canada from British Columbia and Alberta. Some of the new species honor local conservation heroes like Kristiina Ovaska (Ovaskella ovaskae, new genus and species), William Leonard (Bollmanella leonardi), and Robert Michael Pyle (Loomisiella pylei). Other species are named from the localities where they were collected, such as Loomisiella evergreen whose type locality is designated The Evergreen State College (Go Geoducks!), Bifurcatella olympiana, named after the city from which many records of this species are known, and Bifurcatella hobo, named for one of my favorite places on earth — Hobo Cedar Grove Botanical Area in northern Idaho.
A conotylid species, likely Complicatella complicata, from Priest Point Park, Olympia, Washington. Image by William P. Leonard, used here with permission.
I started looking for litter-dwellers in 2003 with Bill Leonard. We sent our millipedes to (who were then) the only millipede experts in North America, William Shear and Rowland Shelley (1942-2018). This collaboration was and continues to be a great success, resulting in the description of the new family Microlympiidae, the first North American record for the family Anthroleucosomatidae with the new genus and species Leschius mccallisteri, and many other new genera and species that resulted in both patronyms and authorships for Leonard and myself. This collaboration and the friendships that formed over millipede species discovery is also commemorated in this recent paper, by the species Taiyutyla amicitia — amicita meaning “friendship”. Through our work, the temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest have become recognized as a hot spot for millipede biodiversity. Many more species await description, and many more likely await discovery.
Casey H Richart 