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NEW Littoral myriapods website

Added on 2010-07-20 16:00:57 by Barber, Tony
Centipedes and millipedes seem unlikely animals to find on seashores but in fact there are several species of millipede and more than forty centipedes (notably the geophilomorphs or “wire centipedes”) that are known from around high water or below on beaches around the world and there are certainly other species to be recorded from such sites.
They occur in rock crevices, under rocks, in shingle, under stones on salt-marshes and also amongst drift line debris and seem to be well adapted to such sites. In fact representatives of quite a lot of other “terrestrial” arthropods such as spiders, pseudoscorpions, scorpions and insects have also been found at such sites at various times and at various places and like these myriapods seem to have become either obligate or facultative halophiles. The new website lists the species of pauropods, symphylans, millipedes and centipedes currently so far known from littoral sites and an invitation to look for more.

Tony Barber
Myriapoda Taxonomic Editor for WoRMS

Link: http://www.marinespecies.org/myriapoda



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