Lophoproctidae, Silvestri, 1897

Short, Megan & Vahtera, Varpu, 2017, Phylogenetic relationships of millipedes in the subclass Penicillata (Diplopoda) with a key to the genera, Journal of Natural History 51 (41 - 42), pp. 2443-2461 : 2454

Family Lophoproctidae

The combined analysis with and without morphology analysed under parsimony indicates monophyly of Lophoproctidae , although it is weakly supported in both (JF 69%/JF <50%). The ML analysis resolves Lophoproctidae as paraphyletic with the Polyxenidae subfamily Monographinae . It is of interest to note that Lophoproctidae and Monographinae share a number of important characters such as number of segments and leg pairs (with the exception of one lophoproctid species) and arrangement of the telson with the same type of caudal bundle and ornamental trichome arrangement ( Condé and Nguyen Duy-Jacquemin 2008). Both analyses show the three lophoproctid genera ( Lophoproctus , Alloproctoides , Lophoturus ) as separate groups ( Alloproctoides is represented by only one specimen). The position of L. madecassus , with just nine segments, 11 pairs of legs and seven stadia, provides some support for Condé’ s hypothesis of an evolutionary trend in Polyxenida towards loss of segments ( Condé 1970).

Mean pairwise distances between the genera Lophoproctus and Alloproctoides are 15.5% (COI)/2.2% (18S rRNA)/21.2% (16SrRNA); between Lophoproctus and Lophoturus 3.0% (18S)/19.4% (16S); and between Lophoturus and Alloproctoides 2.3% (18S) 21.0% (16S).