New Seychelles species of centipede identified |30 May 2011
This type of centipede is known as a ‘house centipede’ because southern European species can often be found in houses, however, the Seychelles species only lives in high forest. The European species was recently found on Praslin where it has been introduced.
Seychellonema gerlachi was first found in 1894 by the German biologist August Brauer but unfortunately his specimen from somewhere on Mahé was too damaged to be identified. The Belgian invertebrate collectors Benoit and Van Mol in 1972 found another on Mont Dauban on Silhouette. Again the specimen was damaged. These are very delicate animals with their long fine legs and are difficult to collect in good condition. This is made worse by the fact that the identification features include hairs on the legs. As the legs tend to fall off collected animals this makes collection of identifiable material a rare event.
In 1990 Pat Matyot found another one on Silhouette, again it turned out to be an unidentifiable juvenile. Since Nature Protection Trust of Seychelles (NPTS) started working on conservation and research on Silhouette, this rare species was located on a few occasions, but always unidentifiable juveniles. Very recently a breakthrough was achieved when a large number of perfectly preserved animals were collected, including several large adults. This has allowed a remarkably detailed study of this species and a comparison to be made with other species. Seychellonema is now known to be a high forest species endemic to Seychelles and most closely related to centipedes from Asia. The NPTS was investigating the status and the ecology of this species up until the eviction of the organisation from Silhouette.
The photograph printed here is the first photograph of a live Seychelles house centipede and was taken in the last few days before the NPTS left Silhouette.
Contributed by Dr Justin Gerlach