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A typical pauropod Pauropus huxleyi, diagram and live animal. Note the distinctively branched antennae.
References
1. Suarez, S. E., Brookfield, M. E., Catlos, E. J., & Stöckli, D. F. (2017). A U-Pb zircon age constraint on the oldest-recorded air-breathing land animal. PloS one, 12(6), e0179262. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179262
2. Cloudesly-Thompson,J.L. (1968) Spiders centipedes and mites. Pergamon Press. Quoted from Jennifer Owen's Wildlife of a garden a thirty year study.
Other sources of information
Websites
British Myriapod and Isopod Group website
Symphylan checklist British Myriapod and Isopod Group
Pauropod checklist British Myriapod and Isopod Group
Symphyla (in) A chaos of delight: a photographic guide to the soil mesofauna.
Pauropoda (in) A chaos of delight: a photographic guide to the soil mesofauna. https://www.chaosofdelight.org/pauropoda
Page text drafted and compiled by Steve Head
Myriapods : Centipedes and relatives
The Myriapoda is a subphylum of the Arthropoda, with about 16,000 species, making the myriapods the smallest major arthropod group except for the springtails and relatives in the Entognatha. Myriapods have many to lots of legs and have long tubular bodies. Like insects they have biting mouthparts and a single pair of antennae, and they breathe in the same way using spiracles to let air into their bodies using fine tracheal tubes. Unlike insects, they have (usually) simple eyes, and no body division into head, thorax and abdomen. While it has often been thought they are related to insects, modern evidence is inconsistent, and suggests they may be more related to arachnids.
Myriapods are unique arthropods in being almost wholly confined to terrestrial habitats (a very few live on the sea shore), and unlike insects don't occupy fresh water habitats. They are primarily inhabitants of the soil and leaf litter, and their long thin bodies and numerous legs seem to be adapted to pushing through loose material. They are a very ancient group, and the oldest example Pneumodesmus newmani is a millepede found in early Devonian rocks of Scotland, about 415 million years old. It was terrestrial and is considered the oldest known air-breathing animal1.
The group is divided into four classes. The centipedes and millepedes are large and have their own pages, while the two other classes are very small and only found if you look hard for them. They are covered in some detail below. Centipedes have just one pair of legs per segment, whereas millipedes have two pairs. Generally centipedes have longer legs and antennae than millipedes. They are also more active and run or writhe when disturbed. Millipedes often remain stationary, and some can roll themselves into a coil or a ball.
The centipedes, Class Chilopoda
"Hundred-footed" centipedes can actually have 30 to 354 legs, but as they always have an odd number of pairs of legs, never 100! Centipedes vary in size from small and thread-like to 30cm in the largest tropical species.They have one pair of legs per body segment and some can run remarkably fast. They are predators with a poisonous bite using a modified first pair of legs called forcipules, but the centipedes of Britain and Ireland are harmless.
,_Arnhem,_the_Netherlands.jpg "Centipede Geophilus flavus Photo: By This image is created by B. Schoenmakers at waarneming.nl, a source of nature observations in the Netherlands. image number 15998599 at waarneming.nl .See Commons:Licensing for more information., CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66909830")
Typical centipedes. We have more detail on garden centipedes here.
The millepedes, Class Diplopoda
The word "diplopoda" means "double-feet", and this reflects the most characteristic aspect of millepedes, that they have two pairs of legs per segment, or rather two embryological segments fuse together to make a double or diplo-segment. They are long-bodied, with 11 to over 100 visible segments. They vary correspondingly in size, but European millipedes are short compared with some tropical ones.
Millipedes are slow-moving herbivores and detritus eaters, forcing their way through soil and leaf litter.
Millepede Tachypodoiulus niger, its head to the right. Note the beautiful wave movement of its many short legs
Our page on garden millipedes is here.
Pseudocentipedes or symphylids are very small (less than 1 cm) myriapods found in soil where they move around particles feeding on fine plant rootlets and decaying vegetable matter. The look quite like colourless/white centipedes, but differ in several not-very-obvious ways. The best distinctions are firstly that juvenile symphylids have only six pairs of legs, rising by one pair each moult until they have a total of 12 as adults, less than any adult centipede. In addition, symphylids lack the forcipules of centipedes.
Symphylids have long sensory antennae, and a short pair of "tails" or cerci at the end of the body. They live for a remarkably long considering their size, up to 4 years. They do not mate, but the female stores the male's sperm in cheek pouches until she lays her eggs, which she then licks to transfer the sperm onto the eggs. Eggs hatch into 12-legged miniature versions of the adults.
Species in Britain and Ireland
There are 14 species of symphylids in Britain and Ireland, from two families and six genera, and most are common. Jennifer Owen did note two specimens found in her garden, but they were not identified. Scutigerella immaculata can be abundant in soils.
_life_stages.jpg "Scutigerella immaculata life stages Photo: F. H. Howard, A. E. Michelbacher / Public domain Wikimedia commons")
Left: Unidentified symphylid, probably Scutigerella immaculata. Right eggs, juveniles and adult of Scutigerella immaculata.
Role of symphylids in gardens
Most of the time gardeners are completely unaware of the existence of symphylids, but they can sometimes be present in such numbers as 5,400 per m2 in soil and 22,000/m2 in glasshouses, when they can become pests2 from damage to roots.
Pauropods, Class Pauropoda
Pauropods, which have no common English name, are minute soft-bodied myriapods, less than 2mm long. They have distinctively branched antennae unlike other myriapods (or insects), and as adults up to 11 pairs of legs, although newly hatched juveniles have only 3 pairs, but shouldn't be confused with insects because they are not divided into head, thorax and abdomen. They are cream, brown or colourless like symphylids, and live in soil and detritus, lacking eyes and feeding on fungal hyphae and plant root hairs. They are not often damaging to plants, and are probably beneficial in assisting breakdown of detritus in soil.
Species in Britain and Ireland
There are 23 species listed from Britain and Ireland, from six genera and two families, but practically no information about their distribution and their likelihood of being found in gardens, although it's likely many species could be present.
.jpg "Pauropod Pauropus huxleyi Photo: By Gonzalo Giribet - (2018). \"Phylogenomics illuminates the backbone of the Myriapoda Tree of Life and reconciles morphological and molecular phylogenies\". Scientific Reports 8 (1). DOI:10.1038/s41598-017-18562-w., CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73408475")
Myriapods : Centipedes and relatives
The Myriapoda is a subphylum of the Arthropoda, with about 16,000 species, making the myriapods the smallest major arthropod group except for the springtails and relatives in the Entognatha. Myriapods have many to lots of legs and have long tubular bodies. Like insects they have biting mouthparts and a single pair of antennae, and they breathe in the same way using spiracles to let air into their bodies using fine tracheal tubes. Unlike insects, they have (usually) simple eyes, and no body division into head, thorax and abdomen. While it has often been thought they are related to insects, modern evidence is inconsistent, and suggests they may be more related to arachnids.
Myriapods are unique arthropods in being almost wholly confined to terrestrial habitats (a very few live on the sea shore), and unlike insects don't occupy fresh water habitats. They are primarily inhabitants of the soil and leaf litter, and their long thin bodies and numerous legs seem to be adapted to pushing through loose material. They are a very ancient group, and the oldest example Pneumodesmus newmani is a millepede found in early Devonian rocks of Scotland, about 415 million years old. It was terrestrial and is considered the oldest known air-breathing animal1.
The group is divided into four classes. The centipedes and millepedes are large and have their own pages, while the two other classes are very small and only found if you look hard for them. They are covered in some detail below. Centipedes have just one pair of legs per segment, whereas millipedes have two pairs. Generally centipedes have longer legs and antennae than millipedes. They are also more active and run or writhe when disturbed. Millipedes often remain stationary, and some can roll themselves into a coil or a ball.
"Hundred-footed" centipedes can actually have 30 to 354 legs, but as they always have an odd number of pairs of legs, never 100! Centipedes vary in size from small and thread-like to 30cm in the largest tropical species.They have one pair of legs per body segment and some can run remarkably fast. They are predators with a poisonous bite using a modified first pair of legs called forcipules, but the centipedes of Britain and Ireland are harmless.
The word "diplopoda" means "double-feet", and this reflects the most characteristic aspect of millepedes, that they have two pairs of legs per segment, or rather two embryological segments fuse together to make a double or diplo-segment. They are long-bodied, with 11 to over 100 visible segments. They vary correspondingly in size, but European millipedes are short compared with some tropical ones.
Millipedes are slow-moving herbivores and detritus eaters, forcing their way through soil and leaf litter.
Millepede Tachypodoiulus niger, its head to the right. Note the beautiful wave movement of its many short legs
Pseudocentipedes or symphylids are very small (less than 1 cm) myriapods found in soil where they move around particles feeding on fine plant rootlets and decaying vegetable matter. The look quite like colourless/white centipedes, but differ in several not-very-obvious ways. The best distinctions are firstly that juvenile symphylids have only six pairs of legs, rising by one pair each moult until they have a total of 12 as adults, less than any adult centipede. In addition, symphylds lack the forcipules of centipedes.
Symphylids have long sensory antennae, and a short pair of "tails" or cerci at the end of the body. They live for a remarkably long considering their size, up to 4 years. They do not mate, but the female stores the male's sperm in cheek pouches until she lays her eggs, which she then licks to transfer the sperm onto the eggs. Eggs hatch into 12-legged miniature versions of the adults.
Species in Britain and Ireland
There are 14 species of symphylids in Britain and Ireland, from two families and six genera, and most are common. Jennifer Owen did note two specimens found in her garden, but they were not identified. Scutigerella immaculata can be abundant in soils.
Left: Unidentified symphylid, probably Scutigerella immaculata. Right eggs, juveniles and adult of Scutigerella immaculata.
Role of symphylids in gardens
Most of the time gardeners are completely unaware of the existence of symphylids, but they can sometimes be present in such numbers as 5,400 per m2 in soil and 22,000/m2 in glasshouses, when they can become pests2 from damage to roots.
Pauropods, Class Pauropoda
Pauropods, which have no common English name, are minute soft-bodied myriapods, less than 2mm long. They have distinctively branched antennae unlike other myriapods (or insects), and as adults up to 11 pairs of legs, although newly hatched juveniles have only 3 pairs, but shouldn't be confused with insects because they are not divided into head, thorax and abdomen. They are cream, brown or colourless like symphylids, and live in soil and detritus, lacking eyes and feeding on fungal hyphae and plant root hairs. They are not often damaging to plants, and are probably beneficial in assisting breakdown of detritus in soil.
Species in Britain and Ireland
There are 23 species listed from Britain and Ireland, from six genera and two families, but practically no information about their distribution and their likelihood of being found in gardens, although it's likely many species could be present.
A typical pauropod Pauropus huxleyi, diagram and live animal. Note the distinctively branched antennae.
References
1. Suarez, S. E., Brookfield, M. E., Catlos, E. J., & Stöckli, D. F. (2017). A U-Pb zircon age constraint on the oldest-recorded air-breathing land animal. PloS one, 12(6), e0179262. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179262
2. Cloudesly-Thompson,J.L. (1968) Spiders centipedes and mites. Pergamon Press. Quoted from Jennifer Owen's Wildlife of a garden a thirty year study.
Other sources of information
Websites
British Myriapod and Isopod Group website
Symphyla (in) A chaos of delight: a photographic guide to the soil mesofauna.
Pauropoda (in) A chaos of delight: a photographic guide to the soil mesofauna. https://www.chaosofdelight.org/pauropoda
Page text drafted and compiled by Steve Head
Garden Wildlife
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