The centipede genus Eupolybothrus Verhoeff, 1907 (Chilopoda: Lithobiomorpha: Lithobiidae) in North Africa, a cybertaxonomic revision, with a key to all species in the genus and the first use of DNA barcoding for the group

Abstract

The centipede genus Eupolybothrus Verhoeff, 1907 in North Africa is revised. A new cavernicolous species, Eupolybothruskahfi Stoev & Akkari, sp. n., is described from a cave in Jebel Zaghouan, northeast Tunisia. Morphologically, it is most closely related to Eupolybothrusnudicornis (Gervais, 1837) from North Africa and Southwest Europe but can be readily distinguished by the long antennae and leg-pair 15, a conical dorso-median protuberance emerging from the posterior part of prefemur 15, and the shape of the male first genital sternite. Molecular sequence data from the cytochrome c oxidase I gene (mtDNA-5' COI-barcoding fragment) exhibit 19.19% divergence between Eupolybothruskahfi and Eupolybothrusnudicornis, an interspecific value comparable to those observed among four other species of Eupolybothrus which, combined with a low intraspecific divergence (0.3-1.14%), supports the morphological diagnosis of Eupolybothruskahfi as a separate species. This is the first troglomorphic myriapod to be found in Tunisia, and the second troglomorph lithobiomorph centipede known from North Africa. Eupolybothrusnudicornis is redescribed based on abundant material from Tunisia and its post-embryonic development, distribution and habitat preferences recorded. Eupolybothruscloudsley-thompsoni Turk, 1955, a nominal species based on Tunisian type material, is placed in synonymy with Eupolybothrusnudicornis. To comply with the latest technological developments in publishing of biological information, the paper implements new approaches in cybertaxonomy, such as fine granularity XML tagging validated against the NLM DTD TaxPub for PubMedCentral and dissemination in XML to various aggregators (GBIF, EOL, Wikipedia), vizualisation of all taxa mentioned in the text via the dynamically created Pensoft Taxon Profile (PTP) page, data publishing, georeferencing of all localities via Google Earth, and ZooBank, GenBank and MorphBank registration of datasets. An interactive key to all valid species of Eupolybothrus is made with DELTA software.

Keywords: Eupolybothrus kahfi sp. n.; Eupolybothrus nudicornis; North Africa; barcoding; cybertaxonomy; cytochrome c oxidase I gene; habitat preferences; interactive key; semantic enhancements; semantic tagging; troglomorphism.

Figure 1.

Eupolybothrus nudicornis: a – cephalic plate; b – ocelli and Tömösváry’s organ; c – apical part of antenna; d – clypeus; e – leg 10; f – forcipule; g – TT 6-13; h – sternite 7; i – tarsus 1 and tarsus 2 of leg 15, female from Chambi N.P. Clypeal setae indicated by an arrow (Fig. 1d). Fig. 1f without scale. ss – serial setae; ts – tarsal spine.

Figure 2.

Eupolybothrus nudicornis: a – prefemora of leg-pair 15, dorsal view b – coxae and male first genital sternite c – female gonopods. Paramedian sulci indicated by arrows (Fig. 2a). mi – medial incision.

Map 1.

Distribution of Eupolybothrus nudicornis in Tunisia.

Figure 3.

Eupolybothrus kahfi sp. n., male, holotype: a – cephalic plate; b – ocelli and Tömösváry’s organ; c – apical part of antenna; d – clypeus; e – forcipule; f – TT 8-14; g – sternite 7; h – leg 10. Figs 3e and f without scales. ss – serial setae. Posterior triangular projections on TT 9, 11 and 13 indicated by arrows (Fig. 3f), clypeal setae indicated by an arrow (Fig. 3d).

Figure 4.

Eupolybothrus kahfi sp. n., male, holotype: a – tarsus 1, tarsus 2 and pretarsus of a midbody leg; b – tarsus 1, tarsus 2 and pretarsus of leg 15; c – prefemora of legs 15, dorso-lateral view; d – coxae and male first genital sternite. ac - accessory claw; dmp - dorso-median protuberance.

Figure 5.

Neighbor joining tree (K2P) of 5 species of Eupolybothrus based on the COI 5’ ‘barcoding fragment’. Bootstrap support values are shown on the branches. The upper and lower sides of the triangle represent respectively the maximum and minimum of genetic distances within the species.

Figure 6.

a – A view of the entrance of cave Sidi Bou Gabrine, Jebel Zaghouan. b – A view of Jebel Zaghouan, Zaghouan Governorate, NE Tunisia.

Map 2.

Localities of Eupolybothrus nudicornis in Libya and Morocco.

Map 3.

Distribution of Eupolybothrus nudicornis in Algeria.

Map 4.

Locality of Eupolybothrus kahfi in Tunisia.