Sphaerotherium obtusum C. L. Koch 1847
Creators: name: Spiegel, Didier Van den
name: Golovatch, Sergei I.
name: Hamer, and Michelle L.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2002
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Diplopoda
Sphaerotheriida
Sphaerotheriidae
Sphaerotherium
Sphaerotherium obtusum

description: Sphaerotherium obtusum C. L. Koch, 1847   
Figs 31a–i, 40  
 Sphaerotherium grossum C. L. Koch, 1847. Syn. n.   
Material studied:  
 Type material: S. obtusum: ^ holotype, South Africa, Caput Bonae Spei (Cape); ZMB 58.   
 S. grossum: ^ holotype, South Africa, Caput Bonae Spei (Cape); ZMB 57.   
 Other material: S. obtusum: 2Ò, South Africa, Port Elizabeth, A. E. Craven; NMHL.   
Description:  
 Total length ca 30, width ca 22.   
Colour: Head, antennae and collum brown. Thoracic shield, tergites and pygidium light olive green to brown with numerous white punctures and bordered with dark brown along posterior margin. Underside and legs olive green.  
Head with piliferous punctures growing denser towards clypeus; gnathochilarium densely pilose. Both sides of labrum broadly rounded laterad, middle scarcely emarginate, with a single median tooth. Ocelli obvious, almost black. Antennae short, last segment with 13–17 apical sensory cones.  
Collum slightly punctate, with one row of setae along margin.  
Thoracic shield smooth, brim relatively narrow, accompanied by a row of long setae; underside pilose.  
Tergites without median keel, surface covered with white punctation and extremely short setae, mainly so in anterior one-third of tergite, posterior one-third smooth. Endotergum with about two rows of scaly marginal hairs not reaching margin; marginal ridge with neither a row of callosities nor a cuticular pattern, intersegmental membrane densely covered with long setae and cones (Figs 31c, 40).  
Legs with a well-developed lobe on coxa (Fig. 31e).  
 Male sexual characters:   
Second pair of legs with a coxal lobe.  
Anterior telopods with tarsus 2-segmented, distal outer surface beset with a series of well-developed sclerotised ridges, apical side of segment with two tactile spines (Fig. 31f). Posterior telopods with coxal horns slightly surpassing bristly lobes. Femur large, outer surface with strongly chitinised stridulatory organ. Lateral side of tibial process with two digitiform protuberances. Tarsus 2-segmented, a row of striated knobs on anterior side of both segments. Concavity with one finger-like lobe on first segment and one on second segment (Fig. 31g, h).  
 Female sexual characters:   
Second pairs of legs with a coxal lobe. Cyphopod with an almost triangular operculum (Fig. 31i).  
 Comments: The only difference between the types of grossum and of obtusum concerns the colour of the tergites, brown in grossum but light olive green in obtusum, with the sole result being that the white punctation is less readily discernible in obtusum.   
 Although both obtusum and grossum have been described on the same page (Koch 1847: 98), the former name has been chosen as the valid one since it was proposed before the latter name.   
 De Saussure & Zehntner (1902) credited Bourne (1885) with the authorship of both obtusum and retusum, but, as pointed out by Jeekel (1970: 23), there is no evidence that either De Saussure & Zehntner or Bourne considered the material distinct from the earlier, valid homonyms described by C. L. Koch (1847 1863).
description: Published as part of Spiegel, Didier Van den, Golovatch, Sergei I. & Hamer, and Michelle L., 2002, Revision of some of the oldest species in the millipede genus Sphaerotherium Brandt, 1833 (Diplopoda, Sphaerotheriida, Sphaerotheriidae), with new synonymies, pp. 143-181 in African Invertebrates 43 on pages 164-166, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7666078