Giant millipedes appear only to occur in the tropics and in locations close to the equator. Does this mean that body size is an evolutionary indication of thermal tolerance in millipede species?
They must be, for simple physics, having larger bodies must be more thermally stable, that is, they gain heat slower and lose it slower too, this should help them manage it in a better way.
Saludos
How about this discovery of new millipede? Researchers in Australia have described the first reported millipede to live up to its name. The animal has 1,306 legs — breaking the previous record of 750 legs — and was found 60 metres underground in a mining area of Western Australia...
Research into the new millipede was published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports.
This article was amended on 17 December 2021 to include the fact that the discovery of the Eumillipes persephone was initially made by a team of researchers while conducting a subterranean environmental impact assessment...
"The subterranean conditions of Western Australia may consistently be at a much lower temperature and higher humidity and house an evolutionarily closely related mesic-adapted troglofauna. Despite surface temperatures in excess of 46 °C and less than 300 mm/year of precipitation, the groundwater in the sites where E. persephone was collected never exceeded 22 °C. Surface climatic conditions fluctuated considerably across hundreds of millennia, but underground conditions probably remained comparatively stable..."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-02447-0
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/16/the-first-true-millipede-new-species-with-more-than-1000-legs-discovered-in-western-australia
Prof. Russell Gray
In Venezuela we have the so-called Scolopendra gigantea * (Wikipedia CC commons article), I really don't know if they are classified as millipedes, but they live in regions with high levels of humidity above 1500 meters altitude (i.e., cold places). I saw a few ones in the Andean mountains years ago. Scary because they move very fast.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scolopendra_gigantea
Best Regards.
Hi Dr Russell Gray . See the following useful link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200213160105.htm
Kindly see also the following good link: https://www.nps.gov/petr/planyourvisit/millipedes.htm
See kindly the following useful RG link: Article Millipede genomes reveal unique adaptations during myriapod evolution
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