Hoplatessara luxuriosa (Silvestri, 1895) (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Paradoxosomatidae) is native to Australia, not New Guinea

Abstract Hoplatessara luxuriosa (Silvestri, 1895) is partly redescribed and illustrated. Its native range is shown to be in the cool-climate uplands of New South Wales, Australia. H. luxuriosa was originally labelled as collected by L.M. D’Albertis at Sorong in New Guinea. D’Albertis collected on Sorong Island in 1872 and spent the following year in Sydney, New South Wales, before returning to Europe with his New Guinea specimens. It is possible that D’Albertis himself collected H. luxuriosa in 1873, and that the mislabelling occurred later.


Introduction
The native range of the millipede Hoplatessara luxuriosa (Silvestri, 1895) has long been uncertain. It was first described as Strongylosoma luxuriosum by Silvestri (1895) from a male collected by L.M. D'Albertis at Sorong in New Guinea (now in Indonesia's West Papua province) and deposited in the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale, Genoa, Italy. Jeekel (1956Jeekel ( , 1967Jeekel ( , 1968Jeekel ( , 1984Jeekel ( , 2003 doubted this record, as all other species assigned to Hoplatessara Verhoeff, 1928 had been collected in Australia. Jeekel (1956Jeekel ( , 1968 suggested that Silvestri's material had been mislabelled, and that H. luxuriosa 'will be found sooner or later to occur in New South Wales' (Jeekel 2003, p. 28). Car (2009) listed H. luxuriosa as a New South Wales native on the basis of specimens collected in that State and deposited in the Australian Museum. Here we give details of those and more recent collections, make minor additions to the excellent redescriptions by Jeekel (1956Jeekel ( , 1967, and suggest a possible reason for the 'Sorong' confusion.

Materials and methods
Specimens are stored in ethanol in the Australian Museum. Fig. 1 was taken with a Ricoh GX200 and Figs 2 and 3 with a Canon EOS 1000D digital SLR camera mounted on a Nikon SMZ800 binocular dissecting microscope equipped with a beam splitter. Figs 1-3 are manually stacked composites processed with Zerene Stacker 1.04. Figs 5-8 were generated with a Leica MZ16A automontage imaging system using Leica Application Suite Version 3.7.0. Final figures were prepared using GIMP 2.8 image editing software. The latitude/longitude datum for collection details is WGS84. Abbreviations: AM = Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia; MCG = Museo Civico di Storia Naturale, Genoa, Italy; NSW = New South Wales, Australia. Description. Jeekel (1956Jeekel ( , 1967 gave admirably complete redescriptions of the specimens examined by Silvestri (1895), and here we add only a few details:

Order
Live and freshly preserved males and females (Figs 1, 2) with pale brownish-yellow ground colour, lighter ventrally; darker brown on prozonites and anterior portion of metazonites, darkest at waist and dorsally; head dark brown dorsally, lightening ven-  trally; collum dark brown ringed with pale brownish-yellow; antennae dark brown, lighter basally; legs with coxae, prefemur and basal portion of femur pale yellow, and postfemur, tibia and tarsus brown, darkening distally; preanal ring dark brown with  pale yellow epiproct; hypoproct light brown, anal valves dark brown ringed with pale brownish-yellow.
Small pleural keels on female rings 2-4, more prominent on rings 3 and 4; traces of keels on male rings 2-4.
Male ring 6 sternite with transverse brushes of long setae between legpairs 6 and 7. Male ring 5 sternite with sparse transverse brush of long setae between legpair 5, wellseparated from sternal lamella between legpair 4.
Gonopods (Figs 5-8) as described by Jeekel (1956) and illustrated in posterior view (Fig. 4 in Jeekel 1956); the slight bulge on the medial side of the femoral process is partly obscured in posterior view (Fig. 5) and is shown more clearly in anterior view (Fig. 7).
Distribution and habitat. Occurs in the high country west of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales (Fig. 9) in grassy eucalypt forest (Fig. 4) and plantations of Pinus radiata, where adults were found in 2013 sheltering under logs and small pieces of fallen wood or bark. We have not yet confirmed by further collecting the two 1990 localities south of Bathurst (Fig. 9); if these are correct, the north-south range of H. luxuriosa is ca 150 km.

Discussion
The known H. luxuriosa range (Fig. 9) is in the cool, dry 'Central Tablelands' region of New South Wales.
Long-term climate averages for the town of Lithgow, ca 25 km southeast of the collection localities near Sunny Corner and ca 250 m lower in elevation, are 0.7/10.4°C (mean minimum/mean maximum) in the coldest month (July) and 11.9/25.5 in the warmest month (January), with a mean annual rainfall of 858 mm well-distributed through the year (Australian Bureau of Meterorology, http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_063224.shtml; accessed 9 May 2013). Frosts and light winter snowfalls are common events in the area.
In comparison, average night/day temperatures in Sorong, Indonesia are ca 25/31°C throughout the year, and the well-distributed annual rainfall is 2840 mm (http://www.weatherbase.com/weather/weather.php3?s=20579; accessed 9 May 2013). It seems highly unlikely that H. luxuriosa could occur naturally in Sorong, or establish there if introduced. How, then, did the New South Wales specimens examined by Silvestri and Jeekel come to be labelled 'Sorong'?
On his first expedition to New Guinea, the Italian naturalist and explorer L.M. D'Albertis arrived on Sorong Island (close to the coast and near the modern-day city of Sorong) at the end of April 1872 and based himself there until mid-July, collecting birds and insects (D'Albertis 1880). He returned to Sorong Island for several days in mid-November. D'Albertis arrived in Sydney on 1 February 1873 (D'Albertis 1880), took up residence in Double Bay and began a ten-month recovery from fevers and other ailments suffered during his first New Guinea expedition. He left Sydney on 20 December 1873, 'not yet completely restored to health' (D'Albertis 1880, vol. 1, p. 224), on a voyage ending in Italy (Gibbney 1972). His Sorong and other specimens became part of the collection at the newly established Museo Civico di Storia Naturale 'Giacomo Doria', where they were later examined by Silvestri.
It is possible that D'Albertis himself collected H. luxuriosa during his long stay in New South Wales in 1873, and that the specimens were unintentionally mixed with those from Sorong Island, or kept separate and later mislabelled. D'Albertis returned to Sydney in 1876, 1877 and 1878 but did not revisit 'Sorong' during his four later New Guinea expeditions (D'Albertis 1880). We have not been able to locate any documents relating to D'Albertis' movements in New South Wales during his time there in the 1870s, and our explanation for the 'Sorong' confusion remains speculative.