Cormocephalus ungulatus (Meinert, 1886)

Schileyko, Arkady A. & Cupul-Magaña, Fabio G., 2021, Cormocephalus (Cormocephalus) guildingii Newport, 1845 (Chilopoda: Scolopendromorpha): a composite description, new samples from Western Mexico and a new species subgroup of Neotropical Cormocephalus (Cormocephalus), Zootaxa 5071 (3), pp. 301-325 : 316-318

Range of C. ungulatus

According to the faunistic data of Kraepelin (1904: 251), Brölemann (1909: 9), Bücherl (1939: 251, 1941: 300, 1974: 103) and Chagas et al. (2014: 139) this species has been recorded from French Guiana (Ouanary at Oyapock river), the Brazilian states Pernambuco (Recife) and Amazonas (Manaus), from a few places in Colombia and (with no definite localities) from “Antilles”, Haiti, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. We add to this list Panama, confirm occurrence of this species in the Brazilian State Amazonas but do not confirm it for the Brazilian State Rondonia (because spm Rc 7239 recorded by Schileyko (2002) as C. ungulatus has now been reidentified as C. andinus ). Such a disjunct distribution of C. ungulatus seems to be quite unnatural, possibly being a result of insufficient data. We suppose that this species has a transbrazilian range, being distributed sympatrically with C. andinus in the western section of Amazonia. According to the literature data the distribution areas of C. ungulatus and C. guildingii seem to overlap in Antilles, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru.

Discussion on C. ungulatus and its relationship to C. guildingii

Kohlrausch (1878: 23) described the genus Cupipes , which contained 6 species (of them 3 from the Neotropics, including the new species С. microstoma , synonymised to C. impressus in 1903 by Kraepelin). Cupipes ungulatus was described by Meinert (1886: 187) from the very distant parts of the Neotropics—a couple of localities in Hispaniola Island (syntypes CHIL-1169, CHIL- 1170 in MCZ) and Pernambuco (syntype CHIL- 1168 in MCZ), one of the most eastern Brazilian States. The short original description is not detailed and contained mainly the general peculiarities of the former genus Cupipes but no real diagnostic characters at the species level. Hence, it does not allow us to distinguish Cormocephalus ungulatus from C. guildingii . In 1893 Pocock gave a short note (with no morphological details) on Cupipes ungulatus judging that it is “… closely related to C. Guildingii . But it undoubtedly differs in having all the tergites except the last immarginate”.

The first adequately detailed description of C. ungulatus is that of Kraepelin (1903: 177) who described a few/ some (“… die oben beschriebenen von Panama ”) adult (“Lange 40 mm ”) specimens which should differ somewhat (“passt nicht vollig”) from “Die Exemplare Meinert’s vom Haiti and Pernambuco”. Kraepelin (1903) was the first to mention the presence and configuration of the forcipular coxosternite’s sutures as a diagnostic character of Cormocephalus species. This author wrote (p. 177) that in C. ungulatus the corresponding longitudinal sutures are developed “only in the anterior third” but said nothing about the corresponding transverse suture (so it would be logical to suggest that the latter was absent in his material). All Kraepelin’s specimens had each forcipular tooth plate with typical «1+3» teeth; he also noted (p. 178) “the pale” juvenile specimen from Colombia which should fit well to the description of above-mentioned specimens from Panama.

Brölemann (1898: 318) mentioned a single immature (21 mm long) specimen of Cupipes sp. from “Bas Sarare ( Venezuela)” giving a drawing (corresponding fig. 3) in lateral view of its posterior end of the body—the “possible new species” should be characterized by a total absence of spines on both the ultimate prefemur and the coxopleuron. In 1905 he described (p. 65) this specimen as Cupipes ungulatus var. Venezueliana (using on the same page the trinominal “ C. ungulatus venezuelianus ”, see also Schileyko 2014: 186). A description of this doubtful form ( Schileyko and Stagl (2004) noted, that its taxonomical position is “too unclear to put in any group”) is not detailed enough and lacks data on sutures of the forcipular coxosternite, being, perhaps, based on the abnormal specimen of Cormocephalus ungulatus . However, as an absolutely spineless ultimate prefemur is not characteristic for Neotropical representatives of this genus (except for the doubtful Cupipes lineatus biminensis Chamberlin, 1952 and Cormocephalus C. impulsus Lewis, 1989 ) we prefer to keep C. venezuelianus as an independent species until its type-series is re-examined.

Data on C. ungulatus given by Chamberlin (1914, 1918, 1921, 1922, 1925, 1944) are just faunistic records, which contain neither any morphological data, nor drawings although this author “worked with material deposited at the MCZ ” ( Martínez-Muñoz & Perez-Gelabert 2018: 76). The only worthwhile data on C. ungulatus presented by Chamberlin were two short notes in his papers of 1914 and 1957, where he mentioned that the number of spines on the ultimate prefemur varies in this species considerably and (1914: 184) “it may prove not possible to segregate the forms [of this species] on the basis of this character”.

In 1955 Chamberlin described Cormocephalus mundus from two adult (55–60mm)plus one “immature” syntypes from Southern Peru (Abancay and Ayacucho). According to the original description (which lacks drawings), “ C. mundus ” differs from C. ungulatus only by body size, so we feel confident to synonymise this very doubtful form (see also Kraus 1957: 383). Thus Cormocephalus mundus Chamberlin, 1955 is a junior synonym of C. ungulatus ( Meinert, 1886) . Later (1957: 31) Chamberlin described “ Cormocephalus (Cupipes) tingonus ” from a single adult (“Length, 40 mm ”) specimen from Central Peru. According to the original description (which lacks drawings but is adequately detailed) the new form differs from C. ungulatus by having somewhat longer typical paired longitudinal sutures of the forcipular coxosternite plus a slightly differing number and disposition of the spines on the ultimate prefemur (a character mentioned by Chamberlin himself as very variable, see above). Taking into consideration both these minor differences and the geographical aspect we consider Cormocephalus (Cupipes) tingonus Chamberlin, 1957 to be a junior synonym of C. ungulatus ( Meinert, 1886) . It is interesting, that Chamberlin (1957: 31) wrote about his C. tingonus : ”… two[(!)] last dorsal plates [= tergites] with a median longitudinal sulcus [= suture?]”; the presence of a single (!) median suture on any tergites except for the first and the ultimate is not known at present for any scolopendromorph.

Attems (1930: 62) reasonably synonymised Cupipes to Cormocephalus but just copied (p. 101) Kraepelin’s description of C. ungulatus (including the data on sutures of the forcipular coxosternite). Bücherl (1939: 251) provided a kind of diagnosis for Cormocephalus ungulatus mentioning it from “Pernambuco, Amazonas, Venezuela ” but gave no localities or data on studied specimens, so (possibly), he had no actual material at his disposal. In 1942 Bücherl described in detail (p. 123) “ Cormocephalus (C.) impressus unimarginatus n. subsp.” from an unknown number of specimens (“ 28–29 mm long, No. 141 in Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro ”) from South-Eastern Brazil (Parque Nacional da Chapada dos Veadeiros in Goiás State), which is quite close to Pernambuco —one of the localities mentioned in the original description of C. ungulatus . Bücherl’s C. impressus unimarginatus fits well to our composite diagnosis of C. guildingii but definitely differs by having 3+3 teeth on the forcipular tooth plates (fig. 5 in Bücherl 1942) and the total absence of “un sulco horizontal no coxosternum forcipular”—the diagnostic character of C. ungulatus —so we presume that the mentioned above material from Goiás represents the latter species.

In their faunistic account Martínez-Muñoz and Perez-Gelabert (2018: 76) wrote that Chamberlin (1918) “reexamined” Meinert’s Haitian syntypes of C. ungulatus as C. guildingii “leaving the syntype from Pernambuco as the only name bearer for C. ungulatus ” (p. 83). In fact, Chamberlin (1918: 156) simply noted these syntypes as “ Cupipes guildingi [sic!] (Newport)” but gave no reasons for this.Also there is no published evidence (morphological data, drawings etc.) of that “reexamination”; however, as the formal act of synonymisation took place, we re-validate C. ungulatus basing on the set of diagnostic characters (see below).

Summing up all these, short and much scattered, morphological descriptions we can state that, at present, C. ungulatus is the closest relative of C. guildingii differing from the latter by the total absence of a forcipular transverse suture (this reliable character seems to be the main diagnostic one) and much shortened (about 1/3 of coxosternite length) corresponding longitudinal sutures, which are complete (or nearly so) in C. guildingii . Two other characters are: the number of laterally marginated tergites—examined specimens of C. ungulatus actually show only the ultimate tergite marginated (compare to composite diagnosis of C. guildingii above, Fig. 21 )—and the absence of ventral spines on the ultimate prefemur. However, both of these characters are not stable in Cormocephalus and should not be used as diagnostic on their own.

It should be noted also, that only a few specimens of C. ungulatus are known from the literature, of them only Kraepelin’s (1903) specimen from Panama and our Rc 6483 and Rc 7155 (which seems to be immature due to its small length and, possibly, newly molted) have been described in enough detail to distinguish this species from C. guildingii . Thus, we prefer to keep C. ungulatus ( Meinert, 1886) as an independent species until re-examination of the type series (which is not available at the present).

Figures

FIGURES 15–21. Cormocephalus (C.) guildingii Newport, 1845; Sad. Rc 7690 15 head + LBS 1 ventrally; EBCh ad. EBCh- CHI-0001 16 head + LBS 1-4 ventrally; EBCh ad. EBCh-CHI-0002 17 LBS 20-21 + ultimate legs ventrally; EBCh ad. EBCh- CHI-0003 18 LBS 21 ventrally; EBCh ad. EBCh-CHI-0001 19 LBS 21 ventrally; EBCh ad. EBCh-CHI-0003 20 prefemora of ultimate legs ventrally 21 LBS 18-21 + ultimate legs dorsally.