Scutigera sp.

Dunlop, Jason A., Friederichs, Anja & Langermann, Jasmin, 2017, A catalogue of the scutigeromorph centipedes in the Museum fuer Naturkunde, Berlin, Zoosystematics and Evolution 93 (2), pp. 281-295 : 289

Scutigera sp.

Material.

2 specimens; ZMB 4753; "Bellana, Abyssinien" [probably Ethiopia, precise locality unclear]; leg. C. Erlangen & O. Neumann 04.02.1900. 1 specimen; ZMB 5168; [Paraguay]; leg. A. Barbero; 1913. 3 specimens; ZMB 5137; [ Palästina]; leg. Brühl; 1911/1912. 1 specimen; unnumbered; "Dire-Daua, Manoa" [Dire Dawa, Ethiopia]; leg. E. Wache. 1 alcohol specimen; unnumbered; "Mte. Vipera, Dalmatia No. 907" [Sveti Ilija, Croatia];.1 dry specimen unnumbered; date, collector and placement uncertain.

Remarks.

The Ethiopian material was collected by the ornithologists Carlo von Erlangen (1872-1932) and Oscar Neumann (1867-1946) who were active in East Africa. The Paraguayan material may stem from the botanist Andrés Barbero (1877-1951). Details of the other collectors are uncertain.

Two additional dry specimens, ZMB 88 ( “Aegypt” [Egypt]; leg. Ehrenberg) and ZMB 89 ( “Siber?” [Siberia?]; leg. Pallas are labelled with what we presume to be manuscript names of Scutigera under its junior synonym Cermatia Illiger, 1807. Neither of the species names in the museum catalogue could be found in Chilobase. Ehrenberg as collector is mentioned above, while Pallas is presumably Peter Simon Pallas (1741-1811) who carried out a famous collecting trip to Siberia from 1768 to 1774 at the bequest of the Russian empress Catherine the Great. If this specimen does originate from this journey it would be a strong candidate for being the oldest specimen in the myriapod collection; predating the founding of the museum in 1810. Note that Pallas lived in Berlin shortly before his death in 1811 and it is quite possible that some of his zoological material passed to the then newly founded museum.