University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Center for Systematic Entomology, Gainesville, Insecta Mundi Florida 2017 Cave millipedes of the United States. XIV. Revalidation of the genus Speorthus Chamberlin, 1952 (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Macrosternodesmidae), with a description of a new species from Texas and remarks on the families Polydesmidae and Macrosternodesmidae in North America William A. Shear 1950 Price Drive Farmville, VA James M. Reddell University of Texas at Austin Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/insectamundi Part of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons, and the Entomology Commons Shear, William A. and Reddell, James M., "Cave millipedes of the United States. XIV. Revalidation of the genus Speorthus Chamberlin, 1952 (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Macrosternodesmidae), with a description of a new species from Texas and remarks on the families Polydesmidae and Macrosternodesmidae in North America" (2017). Insecta Mundi. 1034. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/insectamundi/1034 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for Systematic Entomology, Gainesville, Florida at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Insecta Mundi by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. INSECTA MUNDI A Journal of World Insect Systematics 0529 Cave millipedes of the United States. XIV. Revalidation of the genus Speorthus Chamberlin, 1952 (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Macrosternodesmidae), with a description of a new species from Texas and remarks on the families Polydesmidae and Macrosternodesmidae in North America William A. Shear 1950 Price Drive Farmville, VA 23901 U.S.A. James M. Reddell Biodiversity Collections, Department of Integrative Biology University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX 78712 U.S.A. Date of Issue: March 31, 2017 CENTER FOR SYSTEMATIC ENTOMOLOGY, INC., Gainesville, FL William A. Shear and James M. Reddell Cave millipedes of the United States. XIV. Revalidation of the genus Speorthus Chamberlin, 1952 (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Macrosternodesmidae), with a descrip- tion of a new species from Texas and remarks on the families Polydesmidae and Macrosternodesmidae in North America Insecta Mundi 0529: 1–13 ZooBank Registered: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:D689DE8C-5140-4310-BF63-B5A8590E9E19 Published in 2017 by Center for Systematic Entomology, Inc. P. O. Box 141874 Gainesville, FL 32614-1874 USA http://centerforsystematicentomology.org/ Insecta Mundi is a journal primarily devoted to insect systematics, but articles can be published on any non-marine arthropod. Topics considered for publication include systematics, taxonomy, nomenclature, checklists, faunal works, and natural history. Insecta Mundi will not consider works in the applied sciences (i.e. medical entomology, pest control research, etc.), and no longer publishes book reviews or editorials. Insecta Mundi publishes original research or discoveries in an inexpensive and timely manner, distributing them free via open access on the internet on the date of publication. Insecta Mundi is referenced or abstracted by several sources including the Zoological Record, CAB Ab- stracts, etc. Insecta Mundi is published irregularly throughout the year, with completed manuscripts assigned an individual number. Manuscripts must be peer reviewed prior to submission, after which they are reviewed by the editorial board to ensure quality. One author of each submitted manuscript must be a current member of the Center for Systematic Entomology. Chief Editor: David Plotkin, e-mail: [email protected] Assistant Editor: Paul E. Skelley, e-mail: [email protected] Head Layout Editor: Eugenio H. Nearns Editorial Board: J. H. Frank, M. J. Paulsen, Michael C. Thomas Review Editors: Listed on the Insecta Mundi webpage Manuscript Preparation Guidelines and Submission Requirements available on the Insecta Mundi web- page at: http://centerforsystematicentomology.org/insectamundi/ Printed copies (ISSN 0749-6737) annually deposited in libraries: CSIRO, Canberra, ACT, Australia Museu de Zoologia, São Paulo, Brazil Agriculture and Agrifood Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada The Natural History Museum, London, UK Muzeum i Instytut Zoologii PAN, Warsaw, Poland National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA, USA Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Gainesville, FL, USA Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL, USA National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA Zoological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint-Petersburg, Russia Electronic copies (Online ISSN 1942-1354, CDROM ISSN 1942-1362) in PDF format: Printed CD or DVD mailed to all members at end of year. Archived digitally by Portico. Florida Virtual Campus: http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/insectamundi University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Digital Commons: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/insectamundi/ Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-135240 Copyright held by the author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Com- mons, Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc/3.0/ Layout Editor for this article: Eugenio H. Nearns 0529: 1–13 2017 Cave millipedes of the United States. XIV. Revalidation of the genus Speorthus Chamberlin, 1952 (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Macrosternodesmidae), with a description of a new species from Texas and remarks on the families Polydesmidae and Macrosternodesmidae in North America William A. Shear 1950 Price Drive Farmville, VA 23901 U.S.A. [email protected] James M. Reddell Biodiversity Collections, Department of Integrative Biology University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX 78712 U.S.A. [email protected] Abstract. The genus Speorthus Chamberlin is revalidated for S. tuganbius Chamberlin and S. reyesi, new species (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Macrosternodesmidae). The families Polydesmidae and Macrosternodesmidae (as they occur in North America) are briefl y discussed, and their component North American genera listed. The validity of Macrosternodesmidae is reaffi rmed; the family is predominantly North American. Nearctodesminae, new status, is formally designated as a subfamily of Macrosternodesmidae. The superfamily Trichopolydesmoidea is synonymized with the superfamily Polydesmoidea, new combination. Key Words. Troglobiont, Texas caves, gypsum karst, Nearctodesminae, Polydesmoidea, Trichopolydesmoidea. Introduction In 1974, Shear synonymized the genus Speorthus Chamberlin with Speodesmus Loomis. The former genus consisted of a single species, Speorthus tuganbius Chamberlin, described from Carlsbad Caverns, Eddy Co., New Mexico, while the latter was comprised at the time of two species described from caves in central Texas, Speodesmus echinourus Loomis and S. bicornourus Causey. Elliott (2004) named four new species of Speodesmus from the central Texas karst north of San Antonio, and Elliott and Reddell (2009) provided many new distributional records. Shear (1984) de- scribed Speodesmus aquilensis Shear from Eagle Cave, Colorado. While Shear’s 1974 paper redescribed Speorthus tuganbius (as Speodesmus tuganbius) and gave numbers of new records from central and southeastern New Mexico, no additional information about S. tuganbius has appeared in the interven- ing 42 years. Since 1974 much has been learned about the polydesmidan millipede fauna of the south- western United States, particularly its diversity and taxonomic composition (for general summaries, see Shear and Shelley 2007, 2008; Shear et al. 2009; Shear 2012). After more carefully studying a range of cave-inhabiting small polydesmidan millipedes from Texas, Arizona, California, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado, we have concluded that the taxonomy of these interesting animals requires revision. As a fi rst step in the process, the genus Speorthus is here resurrected from what now appears to be an unwarranted relegation to synonymy, and a second species in the genus is described. The synonymy of the family Macrosternodesmidae Brölemann, with Trichopolydesmidae Verhoeff (Golovatch 2013; Golovatch and Enghoff 2015) is revisited and reversed, since Macrosternodesmidae is a clearly diagnosable family, which has its center of diversity in western North America, not in Europe, from whence the type genus was described. Materials and Methods All specimens are in the Biodiversity Collections, Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas. Line drawings were made with the aid of a camera lucida mounted on an Olympus BX50 2 • INSECTA MUNDI 0529, March 2017 SHEAR AND REDDELL microscope. Specimens for scanning electron microscopy were air-dried and coated with an Emitech SC 7620 sputter coater operating at 20 mA for 90 seconds, which typically results in a coating of 240 Å of gold/palladium. Scanning electron micrographs were taken using a JEOL Neoscope JCM-5000 operat- ing at 10 kV, and the images were refi ned using the open-source image-editing program GIMP. Plates were assembled in Inkscape. Maps were composed in SimpleMappr; localities were georeferenced using Google Earth. Taxonomy Family Macrosternodesmidae Brolemann Genus Speorthus Chamberlin Speorthus Chamberlin 1952, p. 12. Loomis, 1960, p. 66. Shear, 1969,