Rhopalomeris variegata Golovatch & Semenyuk, 2016

Nguyen, Anh D., Sierwald, Petra & Marek, Paul E., 2019, The pill millipedes of Vietnam: a key to genera and descriptions of five new species (Diplopoda: Glomerida: Glomeridae), Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 67, pp. 260-297 : 263

20. Rhopalomeris variegata Golovatch & Semenyuk, 2016

Rhopalomeris variegata Golovatch & Semenyuk, 2016 . Russian Entomological Journal 25(4): 411, figs. 1–7; HT male (ZMUM p3485), PT 3 females (ZMUM p3486) from Gia Lai Province, Highlands of Vietnam.

Rhopalomeris variegata : – Golovatch, 2017. Russian Entomological Journal 26(2): 200, figs. 19–33; 2 males, 4 females ( ZMUM), Kon Tum Province, Kon Plong District , tropical rain forest .

Vietnamese glomerid species are assigned to five genera: Annameris , Hyleoglomeris , Hyperglomeris , Peplomeris , and Rhopalomeris . While currently close to 100 species of Hyleoglomeris range from the Balkans to Indonesia, members of the genera Annameris (2 species), Hyperglomeris (7 species), and Peplomeris (2 species) are known only from Vietnam. The three species in the genus Rhopalomeris range from Malaysia to northern Vietnam. Three Vietnamese glomerid species are known from females only: R. tonkinensis , A. robusta , and H. triangulifera . Eight species described in the last century (by Verhoeff, Attems, and Silvestri) are known from their type specimen only, and have never been re-collected. Species distributions for these glomerids are unexplored. For the 12 more recently described species, only Peplomeris magna has been recollected twice (see below) in the same geographic region as the original type material. Thus, the current distribution patterns are strongly biased and reflect the limited collecting effort. Due to the lack of specimens for most Vietnamese glomerid species, morphological intra-specific variability cannot be ascertained. Furthermore, the type specimens of the species described by Silvestri, Verhoeff, and Attems have never been examined during more recent work on the group, allowing at most tentative synonymy suggestions (for H. electa and H. maior ). Providing a basis for future research with comparative material, numerous illustrations of somatic characters, as well as telopods and vulval features are given here for P. magna , and Hyleoglomeris lobus , new species.