Proceedings of 
the United States 
National Museum 
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION - WASHINGTON, D.C. 
Volume 113 1961 Number 3454 
NEW AND PREVIOUSLY KNOWN MILLIPEDS 
OF PANAMA 
By H. F. Loomis 
Although the Panama Canal Zone and the adjacent areas of Panama 
are parts of Central America frequently visited by scientists, the 
millipeds reported from there are few in number, as compared with 
those reported from Guatemala or nearby Costa Rica. Only 
nine species were known from the whole of Panama in 1922 when 
Chamberlin published “‘The Millipeds of Central America” and 
added three new species. In subsequent papers (1925, 1940, 1941, 
1947), he increased the number by 1 established species and 38 species 
purporting to be new. The two largest of these papers (1925, 1940) 
have no illustrations of critical structures of any species, and many 
of the descriptions are brief and founded on females or even immature 
specimens, the most extreme case being three moults from maturity, 
so that identification of the species is at best difficult, and several 
may require rearing young of the same stage as the type specimen for 
exact identity of the mature animal. 
In recent years short papers containing descriptions of Panamanian 
millipeds have been published by Hoffman (1950, 1951, 1953, 1954, 
1955) and Loomis (1958, 1959), and the number of species ascribed to 
the area has reached a total of 62, some of which are not considered 
valid members of the fauna for one reason or another, as will be shown. 
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