Perth, December 17 (The Conversation) Millipedes, or millipedes, were the first animals on land, and today we know of more than 13,000 species of them. There will be thousands more of these multi-legged millipedes that await their discovery and formal scientific description.
“Millipede” means “thousand feet” in Latin and is given this name because of the many legs of these creatures, but no known species had more than 750 legs so far. However, my colleagues and I recently got a new champion.
The eyeless, Eumileps persephone, with 1,306 feet, has been found 60 meters below the ground off the southern coast of Western Australia, making it the first “true millipede” to live up to its thousand-foot name and the longest-legged creature on Earth. has been made.
finding life under the ground
In Australia, some groups of invertebrates include most species still unknown to us. Many of them may have become extinct before we knew about them.
One reason for this is that life is everywhere, even where we least expect it. Although remote areas of Western Australia, such as the Pilbara and the Goldfields, where the land is dry and hard, it is understood that there are not many species.
But the reality is very different. A large variety of little-known animals live underground, living in cavities and crevices in rock several meters below the surface.
One way to detect these organisms is by placing “troglofauna traps” below the surface. E. persephone was found in one of these traps, having spent two months in mining exploration bores in goldfields under 60 meters.
a lucky find
At the time I was working for a company called Benelongia Environmental Consultants, which was hired by the mining company to survey the animals in the area. I was lucky to be in the lab on the day the longest-legged animal on Earth was first seen.
Our senior taxonomist, Jane McRae, showed me these incredible millipedes, less than a millimeter wide and about 10 centimeters long. He reported that their triangular faces link them to the Siphonotidae family, which consists of sucking millipedes of the order Polygonidae.
Their long, slender and pale bodies, with hundreds of legs, reminded me of a paper I read years ago about the longest millipede in the world, the Californian Illacme planipes, at 750 legs. In 2007, while teaching zoology at Campinas State University in Brazil, I used that paper to explain to students that no millipede species in the world actually has 1,000 legs.
Often, popular names are scientifically incorrect, but there was an animal before me that finally stood a chance to make the name millipede biologically correct.
Finally a true millipede
I suggested to Jane that these new specimens from our discovery may be more compatible with the millipede I. plenipes, which belongs to another order of millipedes, Siphonophorida.
We consulted Mark Harvey from the WA Museum, and together were surprised to learn that Siphonophoridae are very rare in Australia: there are only three known species, all found on the East Coast.
Next, I contacted Paul Marek at Virginia Tech in the US, a millipede specialist and lead author of that paper about the 750-legged I. planipes.
This new species grew to 1,306 feet, making it the first true millipede. Paul named her Eumileps Persephone, in reference to her having a hundred legs, and in reference to the goddess Persephone described in Greek mythology.
Why so many feet?
E. Persephone was most likely driven to underground life as the landscape above became hot and dry over millions of years. We eventually learned that Jane was correct about the nature of E. Persephone: it is actually a member of the Siphonotidae family, only distantly related to I. plenips, and therefore the only genus in the entire order Polyzonida that has no There are no eyes.
We classify any millipede with more than 180 body segments as a great length. E. Persephone has 330.
With genetic analysis, we found that this great length has evolved repeatedly in millipedes, and it may be an adaptation for its subterranean living.
The large number of legs probably provided enhanced traction and power to push its body through small gaps and cracks in the soil. But this is just a hypothesis at this stage, and we have no direct evidence that having more legs is an adaptation to underground life.
discover the unknown
Discovering this incredible species, which represents a unique branch of the millipede’s tree of life, is a small first step towards conserving underground biodiversity in arid landscapes.
This begins with documenting new species, assessing their vulnerability, and ultimately formulating conservation priorities and management plans.
A large proportion of the species of dry Australia are undescribed. For underground organisms, it can exceed 90%. Not knowing the existence of these animals makes it impossible to assess their conservation status.
Biodiversity surveys, and in particular the classification that supports them, are incredibly important. Taxonomists such as Jane, Paul and Mark are the unsung heroes of this conservation.
The Conversation Unity Ekta
Unity
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