Sphaerotheriida

Shelley, Rowland M. & Golovatch, Sergei I., 2011, Atlas of Myriapod Biogeography. I. Indigenous Ordinal and Supra-Ordinal Distributions in the Diplopoda: Perspectives on Taxon Origins and Ages, and a Hypothesis on the Origin and Early Evolution of the Class, Insecta Mundi 2011 (158), pp. 1-134 : 19-20

Order Sphaerotheriida (Fig. 13)

One of four orders to have been mapped ( Jeekel 1974, Wesener and VandenSpiegel 2009, Wesener et al. 2010), Sphaerotheriida span the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn and the Equator but are primarily tropical. Regional maps are available for Africa and Madagascar (Alderweireldt 1997; VandenSpiegel 2002; Wesener and Sierwald 2005a, b; Wesener and VandenSpiegel 2007), and Jeekel (2001a) cataloged the Asian fauna.

In Jeekel’s map (1974), African occurrences encompassed Lesotho, part of the Republic of South Africa, and Swaziland (though no records exist from the last), with a few localities from coastal Mozambique ( Attems 1928). Since then Sphaerotheriida have been documented from Malawi ( Jocqué 1984, VandenSpiegel 2002) and Zimbabwe (Alderweireldt 1997), with species listings, complete at the times, by Hamer (1998) and VandenSpiegel et al. (2002); we enclose these areas in Fig. 13.

The Madagascar fauna is documented by Butler (1878), Jeekel (1999), Enghoff (2003), Wesener and Sierwald (2005a, b), Wesener and VandenSpiegel (2007, 2009), and Wesener et al. (2010); those in India and Southeast Asia are addressed by Jeekel (1974, 2001a). India comprises parts of both regions, which are separated by ~ 832 km (520 mi); the southern Indian range extends southward around Sri Lanka from a line roughly connecting Mumbai and Bhubaneshwar, south of Cuttack.

The southeast Asian region, the largest for the order and highly congruent with Glomerida , extends from north of the Tropic of Cancer, as far as Fuzhou, Fujiang Prov., China, to south of the Equator in Indonesia (Java). It extends eastward around Halmahera to “Lydekker’s line” in the north and “Wallace’s line” in the south; a northwestern, finger-like projection extends through northeast India (Assam / Sikkim) and Bhutan, into Nepal, the northwesternmost locality being Chitlong (27.67oN, 85.15oE) ( Attems 1936). This area encompasses all of the Philippines, both parts of Malaya, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and most of Myanmar. Sphaerotheriida have been reported from Indonesian islands off the west coast of Sumatra but not from the Nicobar and Andaman Islands to the north, which logically are inhabited. In addition to Jeekel (1974, 2001a), relevant works include Golovatch (1983b), Golovatch and Martens (1996), Mauriès (2001), Enghoff et al. (2004), and Enghoff (2005).

Sphaerotheriida occupy two parts of Australia. The larger extends narrowly along the eastern periphery from the Torres Strait/Cape York Peninsula to southern coastal Victoria southeast of Melbourne; it includes all of Tasmania and both major New Zealand islands. Additionally, Cynotelopus Jeekel, 1986 , and Epicyliosoma Silvestri, 1917 , inhabit southern coastal Western Australia ( Jeekel 1986b, Black 1997), some 2,624 km (1,640 mi) to the west, which is shown on the Australian milliped website but not on the maps of Wesener and VandenSpiegel (2009) and Wesener et al. (2010). Jeekel (1981) mapped localities up to that time in eastern Australia and Tasmania. The eastern coastal strip extends ~ 160 km (100 mi) inland to Gayndah, Queensland, becoming narrower to both the north and south. The “Torres Straits” record is from Butler (1878), and Sphaerotheriida are widespread in Tasmania ( Mesibov 2000). In New Zealand, Chamberlin (1920) cited the order from Cape Maria Van Diemen, at the northern tip of the North Island, to Dunedin, on the southern coast of the South Island, and we project Sphaerotheriida for Stewart Island.

An obscure record of Pulusphaera fera (Attems, 1935) also exists from an unspecified site in the “Bismarckarchipel” ( Attems 1943, Jeekel 2001a); with even the island unknown, we represent it by a question mark in Fig. 6 , 8 , 13.

Figures

Figure 5-6. Distributions. 5)Known (solid lines) and projected (dashed lines) indigenous distributions of the Subclass Chilognatha showing the locations of significant fossils, parameters as in Fig. 1. It is essentially identical to that of the Infraclass Helminthomorpha (Fig. 14), the only difference being imperceptibly greater eastward expansion for Chilognatha on the southern coast of Western Australia. At present, this is the only place in the world where the Infraclass Pentazonia (Fig. 6) influences the overall distribution of a higher diplopod taxon. Upright triangle, site of Archidesmus macnioli Peach, 1887, the oldest helminthomorph fossil, from Silurian deposits in Scotland; Star, site of the non-spinose oniscomorph pentazonian Carboniferous fossil at Mazon Creek, Illinois, USA; Inverted triangle, approximate location of Gobiulus sabulosus Dzik, 1975, the Cretaceous spirobolidan fossil from Mongolia; Asterisk, location of Protosilvestria sculpta, the Oligocene cambalidean fossil in Quercy, France (Mauriès 1992). 6) Distribution of the Infraclass Pentazonia, which presently excludes the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. The question mark represents the unconfirmed Oniscomorpha (Sphaerotheriida) record from Papua New Guinea (Attems 1943), and the arrow denotes the new Limacomorpha/Glomeridesmida locality in Fiji (Appendix). Star, site of the non-spinose oniscomorph Carboniferous fossil at Mazon Creek, Illinois, USA.

Figure 7-9. Distributions. 7) Distributions of the Superorder Limacomorpha and the order Glomeridesmida, at present excluding the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. The arrow denotes the new record from Fiji (Appendix). 8) Distribution of the Superorder Oniscomorpha. Star, site of the non-spinose Carboniferous fossil from Mazon Creek, Illinois, USA. 9) Distribution of the Order Glomerida, parameters as in Fig. 1, 6.