Polyxeninae, Lucas, 1840

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 : 2455

Subfamily Polyxeninae (genera sampled Polyxenus , Propolyxenus )

ML analysis indicates monophyly (although weakly supported) of Polyxeninae . Within the subfamily, both parsimony and ML analyses show support for a monophyletic clade containing Southern hemisphere Propolyxenus species (samples 8 and 9). The GenBank sequence in this clade ‘ Polyxenida sp. JM_2004’ was collected in the same area of New Zealand as the type specimen of Propolyxenus forsteri ( Condé 1951b) and it is very likely to be P. fosteri . There is also strong support (JF 95%/97%, BS 99%) for a clade containing Polyxenus plus the Northern hemisphere Propolyxenus trivittatus ( Verhoeff, 1941) . Propolyxenus trivittatus requires revision to the genus Polyxenus , with all analyses supporting its distinctness from the Southern hemisphere Propolyxenus .

Mean pairwise distances between the genera Polyxenus and Propolyxenus were calculated with Propolyxenus divided into southern and northern groups: the southern group included P. australis , P. fosteri and the GenBank sequence ‘ Polyxenida sp. JM_2004’, whereas the northern group included P. trivittatus . Pairwise distances for COI are 14.6% (southern)/11.4% (northern), for 18 S 2.3 % (southern)/2.2% (northern) and for 16 S 21,7 % (southern only).