Taxonomic review of the Amazonian millipede genus Parastenonia Hoffman, 1977 and description of a new species from iron-ore caves (Polydesmida: Chelodesmidae)

ABSTRACT

The Amazonian genus Parastenonia Hoffman, 1977 is here revised. The species P. carajas sp. nov. is described from Brazilian iron-ore caves and P. aurae (Schubart, 1947) is considered junior synonym of P. parae (Cook, 1895). In addition, the known geographic distribution of the genus is presented with the inclusion of new occurrence data.

http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:CCBEED10-DCB4-48C9-A71D-CED3462DD72A

KEYWORDS:

• Neotropical
• Brazil
• Amazonian forest
• iron-ore cave
• conservation
• Diplopoda

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the team from MZUSP and MNRJ for the loan of the specimens examined. Thanks to Ricardo Pinto da Rocha and Mauro Cardoso Junior (MZSP) and Ludson Ázara, Carla Barros and Adriano Kury (MNRJ) for their hospitality during visits. We are also in debt to Jason Dunlop and Anja Friederichs (ZMB) for kindly sending the pictures of the types of P. parae. To Beatriz Mauricio for help in the SEM images in the Laboratório de Biologia Celular of the Instituto Butantan, and Matheus H. Simões (Vale S.A.) for kindly sharing his pictures (Figures 7(a, b)). A special thanks to Ross Thomas for critical reading of the English. This work was supported by CNPq under grant 130092/2018-5; and São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) under grant 2018/00103-8 to RSB; by the FAPESP under Grant 2016/24248-0 to LFMI; by the CNPq under grant 301776/2004-0 to ADB. Thanks to Vale S.A. by the grant n° 4504291253 “Projeto de Curadoria dos Diplopodos Cavernicolas da Coleção do Instituto Butantan (IBSP)” to CARS. This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES – Finance Code 001).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.