DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6643980
title: Occurrence records for Craterostigmus tasmanianus Pocock, 1902

description: The centipedes <em>Craterostigmus tasmanianus</em> Pocock, 1902 and <em>C. crabilli</em> Edgecombe and Giribet, 2008 are the only known species in the order Craterostigmomorpha. <em>C. tasmanianus</em> occurs only in Tasmania (Australia), while <em>C. crabilli </em>occurs in both the North and South Islands of New Zealand. <em>C. tasmanianus</em> is widespread in Tasmania and is found in forest and woodland from sea level to at least 1300 m elevation, and in areas with average annual rainfall from 600 to 2500+ mm. It requires moist microhabitats, and in the drier parts of its range it is restricted to riparian forest and scrub and on south-facing hillslopes. It can be locally abundant in rainforest, in mid-elevation wet eucalypt forest, and in high-elevation eucalypt woodland on Tasmania's Central Plateau. For more information on the habits and life history of <em>C. tasmanianus</em>, see Mesibov (1995) (https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/57364741). In the table "Craterostigmus_tasmanianus_records.txt" I list <em>C. tasmanianus</em> occurrence records in Darwin Core format. Data for my own collecting events are from an authority file (https://zenodo.org/record/6618279). I excluded three uncertain records: (1) Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (Launceston, Tasmania, Australia), QVM:23:25118 (1 specimen). The only locality information on the specimen label is "Site 4, no. 3 pit" (2) Specimens collected on Mt Wellington by Vernon Hickman (University of Tasmania) and studied by Sidnie Manton (University of Cambridge). Manton thanked "Professor V. V. Hickman for his indefatigable efforts in climbing Mount Wellington, Tasmania, and collecting and packing <em>Craterostigmus tasmanianus</em> for me on a number of occasions, and for the information he has sent me about this animal" (p. 359 in Manton SM (1965) The evolution of arthropodan locomotory mechanisms. Part 8. Functional requirements and body design in Chilopoda, together with a comparative account of their skeleto-muscular systems and an Appendix on a comparison between burrowing forces of annelids and chilopods and its bearing upon the evolution of the arthropodan haemocoel. <em>Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society</em> 46(306-307):251-483; pls 1-7.) Parts of two Hickman specimens of <em>C. tasmanianus</em>, embedded in paraffin, were sent by Manton to Carol Prunescu for anatomical studies (https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/58835329). (3) A specimen in the Field Museum of Natural History (FMNHINS 0000 096 000) is said to have been collected by John Kethley "40 km SW of Smithton" on 4 March 1977, field number FMHD#77-190. The date and location are highly unlikely. I assisted Kethley with his collections in northwest Tasmania and on 5 (not 4) March 1977 we sampled along the Savage River Pipeline Road, ca 40 km south<em>east</em> of Smithton. The Field Museum specimen is likely to be from rainforest at the 22-mile peg on the pipeline road, and is probably a partner to the record for Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery J2340. I am also uncertain about the origin of specimens used by Christian Wirkner and Günther Pass in: Wirkner CS, Pass G (2002) The circulatory system in Chilopoda: functional morphology and phylogenetic aspects. <em>Acta Zoologica</em> 83:193-202 (https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1463-6395.2002.00112.x). The authors thank me in Acknowledgements for supplying specimens of <em>Craterostigmus</em>, but I have no collection details for this gift. Note that there are duplicate occurrence records in the table if a single collection of specimens was split between institutions or researchers. As of 15 June 2022, there were 345 occurrence records in the table with a unique combination of eventDate, decimal Latitude and decimalLongitude. In the associatedReferences field I have tried to link specimen lots with research articles. In the case of research articles based on sequences, tracing the links between sequences and specimens was made difficult by incomplete documentation. For this reason there is no associatedSequences field in the table, and I am not confident that I have included relevant references for all records. For help in preparing the records table I am very grateful to Adam Baldinger (Museum of Comparative Zoology)<br> Andrew Crowden (Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania)<br> Wolfgang Dohle (Berlin, Germany)<br> Greg Edgecombe (Natural History Museum, UK)<br> Henrik Enghoff (Natural History Museum of Denmark)<br> Gero Hilken (Universität Duisberg-Essen)<br> Eszter Lazanyi (Hungarian Natural History Museum)<br> Megan McCuller (North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences)<br> Catriona McPhee (Museums Victoria)<br> Kirrily Moore (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery)<br> Carsten Müller (Universität Greifswald)<br> Hilke Ruhberg (Universität Hamburg)<br> Arkady Schileyko (Zoological Museum of M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University)<br> Helen Smith (Australian Museum)<br> Jörg Spelda (Petershausen, Germany)<br> Eivind Undheim (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)<br> Julianne Waldock (Western Australian Museum)