Odontopygidae Attems, 1909

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 : 12-13

Family Odontopygidae Attems, 1909

Diagnosis

A family of Spirostreptida with the unique combination of the following characters: gnathochilarium without a promentum; first pair of male legs with prefemoral lobes on anterior side; one pair of gonopods (modified 8 th legs); gonopod coxa forming a more or less closed tube accommodating basis of telopodite

(basomere); free (distal) part of telopodite projecting mesad; sternum of fully reduced 9 th male legs (sternum 9) prominent; anal valves usually with a dorsal, sometimes also a ventral, spinelike process.

Internal classification

The suprageneric classification of Odontopygidae was treated in detail by Kraus (1966), and again by Hoffman (1991), following the realization ( Hoffman 1991) that the genus name Odontopyge Brandt, 1841 , had been mis-applied by virtually all previous authors.

The classification of Hoffman (1991) is as follows (alphabetical sequence):

Subfamily Archepyginae Manfredi, 1939

Tribe Archepygini Manfredi, 1939

Tribe Ctenoiulini Hoffman, 1980

Tribe Prionopetalini Hoffman, 1991

Subfamily Lissopyginae Attems, 1909

Subfamily Odontopyginae Attems, 1909

Subfamily Peridontopyginae Attems, 1914

The monotypic (only one specimen known), highly dubious family Atopogestidae Hoffman, 1980 was retained by Hoffman (1991), as a second family in the superfamily Odontopygoidea . However, Atopogestus graueri ( Attems, 1927), and hence Atopogestidae , most likely is based on a teratological specimen ( Mauriès 1997) and for that reason was not included in the classification by Enghoff et al. (2015).