Millipede ID?

Exoskelos

Arachnosquire
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Sep 15, 2017
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137
I would be surprised if this can be identified, perhaps it is undescribed but I don't know much about taxonomy. Either way it is absolutely beautiful. I've watched this video a lot of times, probably as close as I would get to owning one. Ecuador is even tighter on their I/E laws than the US, and there's no guarantee they would even breed in captivity. I can always hope it may exist in the hobby. I would call it a crimson bumblebee millipede.
 

Wesley Smith

Arachnoknight
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Nov 3, 2017
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I’ve never seen these before but they sure are beautiful! To my knowledge the only round backed millipedes that are known to not breed in captivity are Orthoporus, when you’re talking about round backed species your odds are pretty high but like you said, it’d be nearly impossible to get one.
 

mickiem

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I would be surprised if this can be identified, perhaps it is undescribed but I don't know much about taxonomy. Either way it is absolutely beautiful. I've watched this video a lot of times, probably as close as I would get to owning one. Ecuador is even tighter on their I/E laws than the US, and there's no guarantee they would even breed in captivity. I can always hope it may exist in the hobby. I would call it a crimson bumblebee millipede.
It is beautiful!
 

davehuth

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Dec 24, 2017
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Andreas Kay is a great nature photographer and tracks down some incredible inverts in the wild. Great to see this video of his!

The tropics are filled with little known or undescribed millipedes. Many of them are absolutely stunning. I've spent a little time staring at the ground in Central America while photographing amphibians, and the millipedes I've run across just boggle the mind. Check out this 6 inch vermillion flaming morsel I tripped over in Costa Rica! There's so much I want to see and learn about, sometimes I can't stand it :rolleyes: Thanks for sharing this video, it really is inspiring.
 

PeteysPizza

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Aug 26, 2018
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Woah! Thats awesome! Looks almost like a cross between a bumblebee and a flame leg... Is that even possible???
 

Exoskelos

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@davehuth I think that red millipede strongly resembles Chicobolus spinigerus, at least in its facial structure, but if I remember right, C. spinigerus is the only member of its genus. It's definitely an eye catcher, I badly wish some of these tropical species were in the US hobby.
 

davehuth

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@davehuth I think that red millipede strongly resembles Chicobolus spinigerus, at least in its facial structure, but if I remember right, C. spinigerus is the only member of its genus. It's definitely an eye catcher, I badly wish some of these tropical species were in the US hobby.
It sure does! Plus it seems to have the football-ish cross section of something like Floridobolus?

The hobby has many attractive and interesting millipedes available already, but I've never seen anything so uniformly and brilliantly orange before. I always worry that people might illegally sweep up beautiful new animals to dump fast for cash, which is why I don't mind import restrictions – frustrating as they can be sometimes. But I know some inverts like roaches have benefitted from careful scientific research in both the field and the lab, so that once their needs are understood some have been shared in the hobby. It would be nice if more of that were possible for millipedes so that both knowledge and enjoyment could grow.
 

Exoskelos

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It sure does! Plus it seems to have the football-ish cross section of something like Floridobolus?

The hobby has many attractive and interesting millipedes available already, but I've never seen anything so uniformly and brilliantly orange before. I always worry that people might illegally sweep up beautiful new animals to dump fast for cash, which is why I don't mind import restrictions – frustrating as they can be sometimes. But I know some inverts like roaches have benefitted from careful scientific research in both the field and the lab, so that once their needs are understood some have been shared in the hobby. It would be nice if more of that were possible for millipedes so that both knowledge and enjoyment could grow.
I was thinking it looked sort of football shaped, like Floridobolus, but I wasn't sure if it was a trick of the camera or not. I don't mind import restriction too much, but it sure does make it difficult for honest people to obtain a lot of these animals. I personally would like to try and establish captive breeding populations of some tropical species, to prevent them from going extinct in the event of habitat destruction. But it also must be tempered against overcollection, so finding sources for this sort of thing is.... difficult to say the least.
 

davehuth

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Dec 24, 2017
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There's so much out there. Like this beauty in Panama with the pale antennae and feet:



And this crazy-patterned flatback, also in Panama. Not a good picture, but you can get a sense of the crazy design of the dorsum as it zipped away:

So many wonderful species out there to investigate and learn about. Studying millipedes must be one of the most wide-open and exciting of the natural science specialties.
 

Exoskelos

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I've got some that are such a vivid color, it's hard to get a good photo of them. Centrobolus splendidus, at least that's what they were sold to me as. It's the color of a cinnamon hard candy IRL. 20180820_000840~01.jpg
I don't doubt that there must be thousands of unknown and undescribed species out there, I would turn this hobby of mine into a job, but unsure what kind of specialization there is besides pest control.
 

davehuth

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I just got my first Centrobolus millipede pair this summer! :happy: Cinnamon Hard Candy is the perfect description for them. I really like that they spend a good deal of their time climbing around out in view where I can see them.

I think you could always be an underpaid, unappreciated, stressed out field biologist dodging vipers and bullet ants in the tropics while you explore and document new species :astonished:
 

Exoskelos

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I just got my first Centrobolus millipede pair this summer! :happy: Cinnamon Hard Candy is the perfect description for them. I really like that they spend a good deal of their time climbing around out in view where I can see them.

I think you could always be an underpaid, unappreciated, stressed out field biologist dodging vipers and bullet ants in the tropics while you explore and document new species :astonished:
Are they an adult pair? I have four immatures and have no idea how big they get. I was told they get as large as Narceus americanus, but I have some fairly massive Narceus sp., can't really imagine the red color on a millipede that size.

I honestly wouldn't mind being an underpaid and unappreciated field biologist (already perpetually stressed, doubt that would affect me much), for a chance to document new species. If I get to bring them back and breed them in a lab setting, that would be better. For complete dietary and life cycle documentation, of course ;) No ulterior motive here, haha. Don't know how to go about getting in that field though, but that is certainly a dream job.
 

davehuth

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Dec 24, 2017
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I don't think Centrobolus splendidus grow much beyond 3 inches. And Paul Marek's lab at Virginia Tech is doing amazing millipede work.
 
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