List of Millipede Species from Southern Western Ghats of Tirunelveli District, Tamil Nadu, India

B. Usha, K. Vasanthi and C. Esaivani

Background and Objective: Millipedes have a crucial role in the environment especially in the forest ecosystem, unfortunately, we have very poor knowledge about it and we think it’s harmful invertebrate and venomous but it’s not, it is important to understand about these are eco-friendly and best decomposer in the forest ecosystem. The main objective of this work is to update species descriptions and morphological features of identified millipede species from the study area. Materials and Methods: Samples were collected from various locations (forest region) of Tirunelveli District, Tamil Nadu, India. Species are identified based on literature and morphological keys and listed out. Results: This report was exploring the 6 millipedes’ morphological features and their distribution from a particular study area. A total of 6 millipede species Gyrodrepanum lamprum (Chamberlin, 1920), Anoplodesmus saussurii (Humbert, 1865), Xenobolus carnifex (Fabricius, 1775), Eucentrobolus maindroni (Bouvier, 1903), Aulacobolus gravelyi (Silvestri, 1916) and Trigoniulus corallinus (Gervais, 1847) belonging to the order Polydesmida, Spirobolida 2 families Paradoxosomatidae, Pachybolidae also of 6 genera were annotated from the tropical or agricultural scapes of Southern Western Ghats. Conclusion: This present research was carried out to explore the list of millipedes in part of Southern Western Ghats of Tirunelveli, India. Simultaneously we need to conserve this, It is recommended to develop a policy on the millipede species management conservation and regeneration to the diversity rates of millipedes and develop the updated documents of millipedes. A typical report will help researchers to the identification of millipedes and know their distributions.

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