Chilota lucifugus ( Beddard, 1897 )

Plisko, Jadwiga Danuta, 2012, An annotated checklist of the South African Acanthodrilidae (Oligochaeta: Acanthodrilidae: Acanthodrilinae, Benhamiinae), Zootaxa 3458, pp. 4-58 : 11

Chilota lucifugus ( Beddard, 1897)

Acanthodrilus lucifuga Beddard, 1897: 343 .

Acanthodrilus lucifuga: Reynolds & Cook 1976: 130 .

Acanthodrilus lucifugus : BMNH.

Chilota lucifuga: Michaelsen 1900: 146, 1913a: 509 , 1913b: 52; Reynolds & Cook 1976: 130; Zicsi 1998: 70. Chilota lucifugus: Pickford 1937: 528 ; SAMC; BMNH.

Type locality. WC: ‘Knysna Forest, in and under rotten wood and leaves …’ ( Beddard 1897).

Distribution. Species collected at more than fifteen sites in the coastal-belt of the south-eastern WC: Knysna Forest, few samples: Deep Walls Research Hill, pinewood on south slope, and also at ca. 520 m asl. Knysna area: 4.5 km north of the town, by the road; Veldschoen’s Drift, in wooded ‘kloof’; Concordia, 6 km on Avontuur road; Witte Fontein, Knysna-Avontuur road; Buffel’s Nek, ‘veld’, bush ploughed for plantation. Avontuur wet marshy place. Ryklippe Farm near Avontuur. EC: Alexandria Forest Station in coastal-belt, slightly north of Port Elizabeth.

Remarks. One specimen in a tube, marked ‘SAMC 160’ but without field label, is probably the holotype. Pickford (1937: 529) wrote: ‘Knysna Forest, 1 fully clitellate specimen, alcohol, type, SAMC 160’, and this is possibly the specimen from the tube containing other 10 specimens labelled Acanthodrilus photodilus ( Beddard 1897: 343) . The material, labelled ‘ Acanthodrilus lucifugus syntypes’ BMNH 1904.10.5.281–82 (part.) with inserted label ‘older label says ex-typis C. africanus ’ may be the material identifid by Michaelsen (1913a) as Ch. lucifugus . Pickford pointed to the other specimen of Ch. lucifugus identified by Michaelsen (1913) from the sample, earlier identified as Parachilota photodilus by Beddard (1897). Other material: SAMC 353, 354; HMHN AF/2686, AF/ 2591–92. Reynolds and Cook (1976) indicated location of the Ch. lucifuga type material in ‘ZMUH 7835’, however, the number ZMH V-7835 includes Acanthodrilus photodilus Beddard, 1897 .