Mecistocephalus insularis (Lucas, 1863)

Published, First, 2007, The Mecistocephalidae of the Japanese and Taiwanese islands (Chilopoda: Geophilomorpha), Zootaxa 1396, pp. 1-84 : 71

Mecistocephalus insularis (Lucas, 1863)

This species was described from ‘Ile de la Réunion’, in the Mascarene Islands, and subsequently recorded by different authors from a large tropical range, including south­eastern Asia and Taiwan ( Wang, 1959).

The identity of this species and its actual distribution are however uncertain (see Bonato & Minelli, 2004) and our ongoing investigations suggest that M. insularis may be limited to the islands of the western Indian Ocean and the southern Arabian Peninsula. The record from Taiwan is probably due to the misidentification of specimens belonging to a different species. In particular, M. changi , from Taiwan, is similar to specimens from Arabian Peninsula possibly belonging to M. insularis , from which it distinctly differs only for its higher clypeal ratio.