Occurrence of the Milliped Auturus erythropygos erythropygos 
(Brandt) in Virginia (Polydesmida: Platyrhacidae) 
Rowland M. Shelley 
North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences 
P. O. Box 27647, Raleigh, North Carolina 27611 
The milliped Auturus erythropygos erythropygos (Brandt) is known 
from scattered localities ranging from the Fall Zone of northern North 
Carolina to the northern Coastal Plain of Georgia and westward into 
the Kings Mountain inselberg and the western Piedmont Plateau of 
North Carolina (Shelley 1978, 1982, Filka and Shelley 1980). The 
northernmost site, 8.3 km (5.2 miles) WSW of Gaston, Northampton 
Co., N.C, is the only one north of the Roanoke River, and because it is 
only 3.2 km (2 miles) S of the Virginia border, I (Shelley 1978, 1982) 
predicted discovery in that state. 
A Virginia locality can now be confirmed. I collected two males 
and one female on 1 1 May 1988, in Brunswick Co., 9.6 km (6 miles) SE 
of Lawrenceville, along Va. Hwy. 670 just south of the Meherrin River, 
about 19 km (11.9 miles) N of the North Carolina state line and due 
north of the Northampton Co. site. The specimens were encountered in 
typical habitat for American platyrhacids, under bark and in a moist, 
rotting oak stump at the base of a wooded slope. They conform to the 
anatomical illustrations and description of A. e. erythropygos (Shelley 
1982). Efforts to find the milliped in adjacent counties to the north, east, 
and west in May and September, 1988, were unsuccessful; therefore, the 
extent of the population north of the Roanoke River is unknown. Both 
the Brunswick and the Northampton samples were obtained in May, 
but those from western North Carolina were recorded in April, July, 
August, October, and December of other years (Shelley 1982), which 
suggests that the milliped should be collectable in Virginia during the 
same months. The Brunswick Co. locality is the northernmost for the 
species, genus, tribe, and family along the Atlantic Coast and the only 
known occurrence of the Platyrhacidae in eastern Virginia. Euryurus 
leachii (Gray) occurs in the westernmost counties near West Virginia, 
Kentucky, and Tennessee (Hoffman 1978). 
The Virginia specimens of A. e. erythropygos are housed in the 
North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences invertebrate collection, 
catalog number A4897. The known distribution of the Platyrhacidae in 
Virginia is depicted in Fig. 1. 
Brimleyana 16:61-62, July 1990 
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