# Another South African ID please



## Ice Cold Milk (Dec 2, 2009)

I have two specimens like this - both are only about 5-6cm right now. 

S. morsitans??  

They're very photogenic when they don't move!

thanks,
-=ICM=-


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## SAn (Dec 2, 2009)

amazing specimens.. nice colors


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## peterbourbon (Dec 2, 2009)

Hi,

the literature would say this is S. morsitans, but I begin to doubt it to be honest, because after some analysis of available literature I suspect some taxonomists have overseen some things in past.

I have seen several South African species of different coloration that always get stuck in identification, being a morsitans and obviously differing in many features that have been formerly considered for S. morsitans at all.

This will stay a mystery, but I'm sure it's going to be clarified in near future. 
Pitily South African material is rarely available in the rest of the world - that's why it's painstakingly hard to analyze the South African Scolopendra-species that fall under the big range of morsitans-variations.

Regards
Turgut


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## Jonathan.Hui (Dec 2, 2009)

The colour is so... artistic LOL :}


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## zonbonzovi (Dec 2, 2009)

Beautiful!  Your macro abilities bring out the detail very well- what camera/setup are you using?  

I think Kenthebugguy had these in limited supply recently, sold as a "black headed" S. morsitans.  

Here are some taxonomic excerpts from "Annals of the South African Museum", not sure how relevant they are, but id did seem to list a lot of species:

http://books.google.com/books?id=sh...#v=onepage&q=trachycormocephalus afer&f=false


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## Galapoheros (Dec 2, 2009)

That's awesome!  I remember seeing those in another old post somewhere.


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## burmish101 (Dec 2, 2009)

Best looking pede ever?!


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## Taryllton (Dec 3, 2009)

oh my...

.


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## Ice Cold Milk (Dec 3, 2009)

zonbonzovi said:


> Beautiful!  Your macro abilities bring out the detail very well- what camera/setup are you using?
> 
> I think Kenthebugguy had these in limited supply recently, sold as a "black headed" S. morsitans.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the link - Hopefully I will be able to wrap my head around it for future reference!  

I purchased a Panasonic FZ50 with a Raynox 250 macro lens, both specifically for doing macro photography.  That setup is considered the "Poor Man's Awesome Macro Setup".   

Peter - I agree, there are so many centipedes here that are posted for ID'ing, and they all are narrowed down to S. morsitans.  It's rather annoying!  
What kind of morphological (outward) traits can I look for that may differ from the type specimen of S. morsitans?   Will I have to be like the tarantula and scorpion taxonomists and claim it's a new species based on the most miniscule difference?  Hehe.


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## peterbourbon (Dec 3, 2009)

Hey,

indeed S. morsitans is described as if it could cover 80% of the pedes worldwide!  (I'm exaggerating, of course. But it feels like that).

I never saw any speciman with ridges at the margin of terminal legs (dorsally) in SA. I've seen several color morphs from SA and all those have considerably long terminal legs with smooth surface.

Of course, maybe all specimen I've seen were females, but even they have very faint ridges on prefemur and femur. I couldn't see those ridges on the terminals of neither your pede nor the ones I saw in past from SA.

S. morsitans is mainly based on this secondary sexual dimorphism, but I suspect it's a dimorphism occuring in different species and hence may not be a suitable taxonomical feature to put all those pedes in just one species.
Besides that it is quite unusual for S. morsitans featuring less than 6 basal sparsely hirsute antenna segments. I can see in your picture that it features 5 1/3. This is the main problem of arguments based on variation. You never know when variations overrun the basic idea of the description of a certain species.

There is another paper by _Lawrence (1975) " The Chilopoda of South West Africa (Cimbebasia Series A 4)"_ where he says on page 40:

_"Scolopendra morsitans - The species is found almost throughout the African continent. In South Africa it is absent from the Cape Peninsula where it is replaced by Arthrorhabdus formosus. It is extremely common in South West Africa; a little more than half the centipedes in the collection of the State Museum, Windhoek, which are dealt with this paper, belong to this species. In South West Africa it is represented by a yellow coloured variety with characteristic blue-green cross bars, but south of the Orange River a form with an indigo blue body, orange legs and antenna is the prevailing colour variety"._

Saying that and maybe neglecting the above mentioned characteristicss of S. morsitans I ask myself what remains as a clearly distinguishable character in this species. This is a big problem in identifying S. morsitans - and I feel there is much more taxonomical reassessment needed to tidy up the whole S. morsitans thing.

Regards
Turgut


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## plo (Dec 6, 2009)

Wow. its amazing that even I, with my very limited knowledge of pedes, can begin to understand this. Thanks to everyone who adds to our knowledge and does not take the easy way out and just say "it could be"
  Incredible pedes by the way.


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