The centipede family Anopsobiidae new to North America, with the description of a new genus and species and notes on the Henicopidae of North America and the Anopsobiidae of the Northern Hemisphere (Chilopoda, Lithobiomorpha)
Author
Shear, William A.
text
Zootaxa
2018
4422
2
259
283
journal article
29146
10.11646/zootaxa.4422.2.6
47816d99-6645-43ad-a52d-33cc68a6a7c7
1175-5326
1455619
F6658C2B-9681-430A-8975-7B3AE2C233EE
Zygethobius pontis
Chamberlin, 1911
Zygethobius pontis
Chamberlin 1911a
: 34
;
Mercurio 2010
: 47
(complete references)
See the generic account above for a discussion of the synonymized subgenus
Zantethobius
.
Zygethobius pontis
is widespread in the southern Appalachians from West Virginia and Virginia south at least to western North Carolina and west to Kentucky and Tennessee, abundant in places and relatively easy to collect. There is an old record from New York (
Bailey 1928
) but the specimen seems to have been lost. I doubted this northerly record until I collected
Z. pontis
at Austin, Potter Co., Pennsylvania, not far from the New York border. Later, I found specimens from New York in the USNM collection; some of these were labelled by Chamberlin with the unpublished species name “
yorkus
.” Variation in some characters suggest this may be a complex of closely related species, particularly in the southern Appalachians. I have collected it at numerous localities in Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, invariably finding it by sorting damp leaf litter in deciduous forests, or by Tullgren funnel collections from the same habitats. Chestnut brown with a narrow black median stripe, darker at both ends, head sometimes almost black, up to
14 mm
long. Antennae of the largest specimens usually with 43 articles; forcipular teeth 3+3, coxal pores 3, 3, 4, 4, 4 to 4, 4, 4, 5, 5. Produced tergites 6, 7, 9, 11, 13. The produced posterior angles of tergite 6 are not so obvious or are even absent in some specimens.