Scolopendra viridipes Dufour 1820
Creators: name: Doménech, Carles
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Chilopoda
Scolopendromorpha
Scolopendridae
Scolopendra
Scolopendra viridipes

description: Scolopendra viridipes Dufour, 1820
Figs 2 B, 3, 4, 9 A, C, Table 3, Suppl. material 1: file 1
Scolopendra viridipes Dufour, 1820: 317.
? S. clavipes C. L. Koch, 1836 [1847 sic.]: Brandt (1840): 149; Ranzani (1841): 441.
S. viridipes: Walckenaer and Gervais 1841: 258, as unrecognisable taxon.
? S. doriae Pirotta, 1878 a (= S. cingulata): Pirotta 1878 b: 406.
? S. oraniensis Lucas 1846: Kraepelin 1903: 246, as “? S. viridipes Dufour, 1860 " (sic.).
S. viridipes [Dufour, 1822 sic.]: Attems 1930: 51, as unrecognisable taxon.
Etymology.
From Latin viridis (green) and pes (feet), literally meaning green-footed Scolopendra.
Type series and type depository.
Types currently lost.
Collector and collection date.
J. M. L. Dufour, between 1811 and 1813 (Dufour 1888; Hessel 2000; Ferrández 2020).
Type locality.
“ Kingdom of Valencia ”, Valencian Community, east of Spain.
Distribution.
As for type locality.
Neotype designation.
With the express purpose of clarifying the taxonomic status and the type locality of the nominal taxon S. viridipes Dufour, 1820, the following neotype for this species is designated (ICZN 1999: Art. 75 and 76.3):
Male. Embassament del Bosquet, Moixent; Valencia Province (Spain) (38 ° 51 ' 21.7 " N, 0 ° 44 ' 36.7 " W 380 m a. s. l.) (Figs 3, 4; Table 3; Suppl. material 1: file 1). Coll. 26 Sep. 2020. C. Doménech leg. Repository in CEUA with the collection number CEUAMr 21 (In this text also referred to as S. viridipes “ topotype 1 " before its neotype designation).
Proposed new nomenclatural status.
S. viridipes Dufour, 1820 is an invalid name subjectively designated here as nomen oblitum and a senior synonym of S. oraniensis Lucas, 1846.
Translation of the original descriptions from Latin and French.
[annotations in brackets]. (Original description available from: https://books.google.be/books?vid=GENT900000003803&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false)
XII. Green-footed Scolopendra
Scolopendra (viridipes) shell [dorsal habitus; tergites] livid, antennae and feet [legs] greenish, 21 feet [legs] in each side, the posterior ones longer.
Habitat: under the rocks of the Valencian Kingdom’s mountains. Length 18 lignes [1 Paris ligne = 2.2556 mm; 40.6 mm].
It differs from Scol. morsitans. The body segments [sensu tergites] are roughly square and equal between them, except for the first two and the last one. The head [cephalic plate] is small and oval. The whole body [dorsal habitus] has a markedly livid colour. The legs and the antennae are greenish. They [antennae] end in a setaceous point and have more than fifteen articles. The legs grow from the head [cephalic plate] to the anus [ultimate leg-bearing segment; ULBS]. The palps [first maxillary telopodites] end with a dilated and round article [article 3].
Remarks involving the type series and type series depository.
Efforts to locate S. viridipes type series in its four most probable repositories, CLD, MNHN, MNCN, and SLB, were unsuccessful (J. J. Geoffroy (MNHN) and B. Sánchez (MNCN) pers. comm. May 2020 to Oct 2021; CD pers. obs.).
Knowing that Dufour mostly preserved his specimens in dry conditions (Dufour 1888; Ferrández 2020), it is conceivable that the major part of his material was degraded by subsequent insufficient curatorial handling (Ferrández 2020; MA Ferrández pers. comm. May 2020 – Oct. 2021).
Therefore, the S. viridipes type series is here considered as definitively lost material.
Original description comparison.
Because the type material for S. viridipes has vanished, and to determine to which species Dufour (1820) was referring, the available characters for this taxon are compared with all other Scolopendromorpha from Peninsular Spain (Table 1).
Initially, the brief morphological description does not allow one to assign S. viridipes to any definite genus because some features are common for all Scolopendromorpha, either because they are insufficiently detailed or widely observed (See “ * ” in Table 1). Cryptops (C.) lobatus Verhoeff, 1931, C. (T.) longicornis (Ribaut, 1915), as well as Plutonium zwierleini Cavanna, 1881 should be discarded as candidates for the application of the name S. viridipes, due to the fact that their restricted distributional areas are outside of those of this species.
The six remaining Cryptops species (Fig. 1 B) are smaller than S. viridipes, except for C. (C.) anomalans Newport, 1844. This rules out five of those taxa as candidates for this name (Table 1). Theatops erythrocephalus (C. L. Koch, 1847) can be similar in size to S. viridipes; however, it can be assumed that Dufour was actually not referring to T. erythrocephalus when he described S. viridipes, since he did not highlighted the conspicuous ultimate leg (UL) width, but pointed out a longer length; nor did he highlight the enlarged size of segment 21, remarking instead on the different sizes and shapes of TT 1, 2, and 21, being these presumably smaller than the TT 3–20 (Table 1). These are all distinctive traits for T. erythrocephalus (Fig. 1 A).
Otherwise the exclusive colouration of S. viridipes, a “ livid ” dorsal habitus with greenish legs and antennae (Figs 2 B, 3, 4), is an exclusive feature that clearly distinguishes it from all other Iberian Scolopendromorpha, with one exception, S. oraniensis. This colouration eliminates T. erythrocephalus and all the Iberian cryptopids as candidates because they all have consistently pale yellowish to reddish integuments and appendages, with no greenish pigmentation (Fig. 1 A, B).
Scolopendra cingulata always has tergites with posterior transverse black pigmentation combined with shiny red, orange, or yellow colouration in their legs when juvenile (Voigtländer and Reip 2013), or pale yellow legs when in an adult stage (Fig. 1 C). Rarely, some adult individuals of S. cingulata from central and western Spain can exhibit a barely discernible green shade on the anterior and / or posterior locomotory legs and basal antennae articles (i. e., Cabanillas and García-Febrero 2020). This pigmentation is absent in the populations surrounding València, the type locality of S. viridipes (Fig. 2 A; BV 2024).
The remaining Scolopendromorpha species inhabiting the presumed type locality of S. viridipes is S. oraniensis. This species is variable in colouration even within local populations (Fig. 2 D – I; BV 2024); however, the pale and greenish habitus is by far one of the most frequent variations in Valencia. Therefore, because of its compatible distribution, size, morphology, and colouration, S. oraniensis is a good candidate to be the species to which Dufour was actually referring under the name S. viridipes (Table 1, Suppl. material 1: file 1).
Hence, prior to analysing some compatible topotypic material, all features stated in the original description strongly suggest that the closest relative to S. viridipes is S. oraniensis, if they do not belong to the same taxon.
Neotype and “ topotypes ” morphological comparisons.
Four colour-, morphological-, and size-compatible S. viridipes topotypes were collected in two Valencian localities known by their authorities (Figs 2 B, 3, 4). All these specimens were examined and confirmed to be conspecific (Suppl. material 1: file 1). From those a neotype was selected (ICZN 1999: Art. 75; Figs 3, 4; Table 3; Suppl. material 1: file 1). The comparison of the neotype and other “ topotypes ” with the syntypes of the closest relative, S. oraniensis (Table 1) confirmed that all of them shared identical diagnostic features (Table 3; compare Figs 3, 4 with Figs 7, 8). Hence, according to all the data presented above, S. viridipes and S. oraniensis are here designated to be conspecific taxa.
Taxonomic and nomenclatural status.
As the two taxa, S. viridipes Dufour, 1820 and S. oraniensis Lucas, 1846, are deemed to be conspecific, the “ Principle of Priority ” provides preference for the name S. viridipes to replace the name S. oraniensis (ICZN 1999: Art. 23, 23.2, 23.3). However, we propose the nomenclatural reversal of precedence (ICZN 1999: Art. 23) in favour of the prevailing usage and nomenclatural stability of the largely accepted name S. oraniensis since the two conditions in Art. 23.9 (ICZN 1999) are met:
“ the senior synonym [S. viridipes] […] has not been used as a valid name after 1899 " (ICZN 1999: Art. 23.9.1.1).
This statement is not strictly true, since Kraepelin (1903) and Attems (1930) did use that name after 1899. Nevertheless, the use of the name in those two publications satisfy the Art. 23.9. 6 (ICZN 1999), which clarifies that “ the mentioning of a name in a synonymy [Kraepelin 1903], or [...] list of names [Attems 1930] must not be taken into account in determining usage under Art. 23.9.1.1 and 23.9.1.2 ".
“ [S. oraniensis] has been used [...] as its presumed valid name, in at least 25 works, published by at least ten authors in the immediately preceding 50 years and encompassing a span of not less than ten years ” (ICZN 1999: Art. 23.9.1.2; see Suppl. material 1: file 2).
Hence, the name S. viridipes is here declared invalid since this is subjectively considered a senior synonym and nomen oblitum of S. oraniensis, while the name S. oraniensis is proposed as a nomen protectum, being fixed for unequivocal referencing of this species (ICZN 1999: Art. 23.9. 2).
description: Published as part of Doménech, Carles, 2024, Taxonomic and nomenclatural reassessment of the Iberian Peninsula's nomina obscura, Scolopendra viridipes Dufour, 1820 and S. chlorotes L. Koch in Rosenhauer, 1856 (Chilopoda, Scolopendromorpha, Scolopendridae), pp. 49-80 in ZooKeys 1208 on pages 49-80, DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.1208.122126