Geophilus easoni Arthur, Foddai, Kettle, Lewis, Luczynski & Minelli, 2001
Synonyms
Geophilus carpophagus 'short form' of Eason, 1964
Status:
GB IUCN status: Least Concern
ID Difficulty
Identification
Ten species of Geophilus are known from Britain and Ireland.
Geophilus easoni is a uniformly chestnut brown centipede, which is smaller (to 40 mm body length) and has fewer legs pairs (47 to 51) than the superficially similar G. carpophagus s.str. Both species have characteristic reddish oval carpophagus fossae on the anterior sternites.
Only recently have the two been considered to be separate species (Arthur et al., 2001) and most pre-2001 records of G. carpophagus probably refer to G. easoni.
More information to allow accurate identification is given in the published identification keys by Tony Barber (2008 & 2009).
Distribution
Geophilus easoni is common throughout Britain and Ireland (although not recorded from Shetland).
Habitat
Unlike G. carpophagus s.str., this is a ground dwelling species that occurs under stones and dead wood typically in rural woodland, moorland, etc. Some notes on habitat preferences of this species are given in Arthur etal. (2002).
This account is based on the 'Centipede Atlas' (Barber, 2022).
References
Arthur, W., Foddai, D., Kettle, C., Lewis, J. G. E., Luczynski, M. & Minelli, A. (2001) Analysis of segment number and enzyme variation in a centipede reveals a cryptic species, Geophilus easoni sp. nov., and raises questions about speciation. Biol. J. Linn. Soc.74:489-499.
Links
ChiloBase 2.0 - World Catalogue of Centipedes: https://chilobase.biologia.unipd.it/searches/result_species/3321
BRC code
16
idBmigTaxa
Cen_139