Alloschizidium Verhoeff, 1919

Taiti, Stefano & Montesanto, Giuseppe, 2018, New species of subterranean and endogean terrestrial isopods (Crustacea, Oniscidea) from Tuscany (central Italy), Zoosystema 40 (11), pp. 197-226 : 217

Genus Alloschizidium Verhoeff, 1919

TYPE SPECIES. — Armadillidium pruvoti Racovitza, 1907 by monotypy.

REMARKS

Schmalfuss (2008) pointed out that all the genera of Armadillidiidae possessing a schisma on the pereonite 1 ( Eluma Budde-Lund, 1885 , Ballodillium Vandel, 1961 , and Alloschizidium ) fall within his definition of the genus Schizidium Verhoeff, 1901 . However, he was not certain that all these genera belong to a monophyletic group and the presence of the schisma might be due to convergence. Therefore, he kept Schizidium as a separate genus distributed from Greece to Iran. The genus Alloschizidium appears to be very similar to Paraschizidium , with a possible synapomorphic character for these two genera being the subovoidal, instead of spherical, shape of the ball when the animals roll up (see also discussion in Taiti & Ferrara 1996). Then, the autapomorphic characters for Alloschizidium compared with Paraschizidium is the presence of the schisma. As remarked by Schmalfuss (2008) a molecular investigation might help to clarify the interrelationships among all the above mentioned genera.