Zygethobius pontis Chamberlin, 1911

Shear, William A., 2018, The centipede family Anopsobiidae new to North America, with the description of a new genus and species and notes on the Henicopidae of North America and the Anopsobiidae of the Northern Hemisphere (Chilopoda, Lithobiomorpha), Zootaxa 4422 (2), pp. 259-283 : 268

Zygethobius pontis Chamberlin, 1911

Zygethobius pontis Chamberlin 1911a: 34 ; Mercurio 2010: 47 (complete references)

See the generic account above for a discussion of the synonymized subgenus Zantethobius . Zygethobius pontis is widespread in the southern Appalachians from West Virginia and Virginia south at least to western North Carolina and west to Kentucky and Tennessee, abundant in places and relatively easy to collect. There is an old record from New York ( Bailey 1928) but the specimen seems to have been lost. I doubted this northerly record until I collected Z. pontis at Austin, Potter Co., Pennsylvania, not far from the New York border. Later, I found specimens from New York in the USNM collection; some of these were labelled by Chamberlin with the unpublished species name “ yorkus.” Variation in some characters suggest this may be a complex of closely related species, particularly in the southern Appalachians. I have collected it at numerous localities in Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, invariably finding it by sorting damp leaf litter in deciduous forests, or by Tullgren funnel collections from the same habitats. Chestnut brown with a narrow black median stripe, darker at both ends, head sometimes almost black, up to 14 mm long. Antennae of the largest specimens usually with 43 articles; forcipular teeth 3+3, coxal pores 3, 3, 4, 4, 4 to 4, 4, 4, 5, 5. Produced tergites 6, 7, 9, 11, 13. The produced posterior angles of tergite 6 are not so obvious or are even absent in some specimens.