Sechelleptus arborivagus sp. nov., a new arboreal spirostreptid millipede (Diplopoda, Spirostreptidae) endemic to Mayotte Island (Comoros Archipelago), Indian Ocean

Abstract

A new millipede species of the genus Sechelleptus Mauriès, 1980 is described and illustrated from Mayotte Island, Indian Ocean. This new species, S. arborivagus sp. nov., found on trees, looks particularly similar to the sympatric S. variabilis VandenSpiegel & Golovatch, 2007, but is much larger and has a very different ecological behavior. Phylogenetic analyses based on a concatenated dataset of the COI and 16S rRNA genes and including nine species of Spirostreptidae (including Sechelleptus, Doratogonus Attems, 1914, Bicoxidens Attems, 1928 and Spirostreptus Brandt, 1833), strongly support the monophyly of Sechelleptus. Despite the similarity of their genitalia, the molecular analyses also reveal a clear-cut genetic divergence between S. arborivagus sp. nov. and S. variabilis (22.55% for COI and 6.63% for 16SrRNA) and further suggest the presence of a higher diversity within the genus Sechelleptus on Mayotte.

A mountain of millipedes XI. The trachystreptoform spirostreptids of the Udzungwa Mountains, Tanzania (Diplopoda, Spirostreptida, Spirostreptidae)

“…The classification of Spirostreptidae will certainly need revision, once phylogenetic analyses have been made. Few studies addressing the phylogeny of Spirostreptidae are available (Mwabvu et al 2013(Mwabvu et al , 2015Hassan & Hassan 2021;VandenSpiegel et al 2021;Nielsen et al 2022) all of which concern at most a few genera -there is obviously a long way to go before a robust phylogenetic hypothesis for Spirostreptidae will be available. In addition to the species treated here, several non-trachystreptoform species of Spirostreptidae have been identified from the Udzungwa Mountains, see Table 4.…”

Complete mitochondrial genomes from museum specimens clarify millipede evolution in the Eastern Arc Mountains

“…Few phylogenetic studies have been conducted on Spirostreptidae or on the order Spirostreptida in general (but see Iniesta et al, 2020), and even fewer studies have been performed using molecular data of millipedes (e.g. Mwabvu et al, 2013;VandenSpiegel et al, 2021). With only 12 published millipede mitogenomes to date (Supporting Information, Table S1), our effort triples the number of publicly available millipede mitogenomes.…”