Three New Records of Stone Centipedes in Nevada

This article was originally published in The Midden – Great Basin National Park: Vol. 18, No. 2, Winter 2018.

New Nevada stone centipede: a male Lophobius loganus. This stone centipede has been added to the Nevada state list after it was found during the 2018 BioBlitz.

By Cedric Lee, Museum Associate, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, CA

Worldwide, there are roughly 3,000 described species of centipedes; about 20% of these are recorded in the United States (Mercurio 2010). However, the majority of centipedes are often overlooked, partly due to their small size and uncharismatic appearance.

Lithobiomorpha, commonly known as stone centipedes, are arguably one of the least studied of the common ground-dwelling arthropods in North America. Virtually no research on the taxonomy and distribution of stone centipedes from the Western United States has been conducted since the passing of myriapologist Ralph Vary Chamberlin in 1967. This is unfortunate, considering that centipedes play important roles in ecosystems.

New Nevada stone centipede: a female Bothropolys permundus. This stone centipede has been added to the Nevada state list after it was found during the 2018 BioBlitz.

In terms of biomass, centipedes have been found in some soil macrofauna communities to be the dominant predators (Schaefer 1990). Thus, centipedes have the potential to exert top-down control of prey and influence macrofaunal abundance and dynamics of ecosystems. In addition, centipedes are an important food source for vertebrates and other arthropods.

Herein, I report three new records of stone centipedes in Nevada: Bothropolys permundus (Chamberlin, 1902), Lophobius loganus (Chamberlin, 1925), and Zygethobius dolichopus (Chamberlin, 1902). Centipedes were hand collected from leaf litter and under stones and logs along Baker Creek and Lehman Creek on June 13, 2018 during the Beetle BioBlitz at Great Basin National Park. The majority of the collected centipedes (24 individuals; 60% of total) were L. loganus. All specimens have been deposited at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in California.

New Nevada stone centipede: a female Zygethobius dolichopus. This stone centipede has been added to the Nevada state list after it was found during the 2018 BioBlitz.

Z. dolichopus was previously recorded from Utah and California while L. loganus and B. permundus were previously recorded from Idaho and Utah. These new records elevate the Nevada centipede checklist to 16 species (Mercurio 2010) and reveal the potential for discovering unrecorded and undescribed species of centipedes in Nevada.

References:
Mercurio, R.J. 2010. An annotated catalog of the centipedes (Chilopoda) from the United States of America, Canada and Greenland (1758–2008). XLibris Corporation, Bloomington, IN, 560 pp.

Schaefer, M. 1990. The soil fauna of a beech forest on limestone: Trophic structure and energy budget. Oecologia 82(1): 128-136.