Chaleponcus Attems, 1914

Enghoff, Henrik, 2022, Mountains of millipedes. The family Odontopygidae in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania (Diplopoda, Spirostreptida), European Journal of Taxonomy 803, pp. 1-136 : 38

Genus Chaleponcus Attems, 1914

Type species

Chaleponcus limbatus Attems, 1914 ( Namibia) , by subsequent designation of Kraus (1960).

Other included species

Fourty-seven, including five species described as new here, see Kraus (1960, 1966), Frederiksen (2013a), Vohland & Hamer (2013), Enghoff (2014, 2017).

Diagnosis (modified from Enghoff 2014)

Differs from other genera of Prionopetalini by the combination of the following characters: proplica and metaplica of gonopod coxa coming together apically and forming a hoodlike cucullus; solenomere long and whiplike, at least twice as long as telomere if stretched out, not spiraled terminally; solenomere without accessory branches or outgrowths (except for sometimes at the very base); telomere proximally folded like a tube or a trough and distally dividing into two or three diverging lamellae.

Remarks

About half of the described species occur in southern Africa as far north as Zimbabwe and southern Mozambique ( Enghoff 2014). Further north, the genus is represented in the Eastern Arc by C. parensis Frederiksen, 2013 , five new species described here and, notably, by the the Chaleponcus dabagaensis group with 21 species in the Udzungwa Mts and C. altirungwensis Enghoff, 2017 from Mt. Rungwe ( Enghoff 2014, 2017).

Chaleponcus schioetzae sp. nov. and C. soerensenae sp. nov., both from the Uluguru Mts, are very similar, sharing among other things a large metaplical palette; they could be placed in a separate species group, the C. schioetzae group, see remarks under C. schioetzae sp. nov. below.