A new genus and species of native exotic millipede in Australia (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Paradoxosomatidae)

Abstract Taxidiotisoma portabile gen. n., sp. n. is described from scattered populations in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, Australia. Populations of Taxidiotisoma portabile in Victoria, Tasmania and parts of New South Wales occur in urban, suburban and agricultural areas, with no collections of the species in natural habitats in the same district. Taxidiotisoma portabile is likely to be a native exotic species whose home range is in eastern New South Wales.

Although its original range is still uncertain, A. novarae is believed to be native to eastern Australia (Hoffman 1979). It occurs in urban and suburban areas in New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia (locality records in Mesibov 2006Mesibov -2015, and has been introduced to New Zealand (Rowe and Sierwald 2006), the Hawaiian Islands (Shelley and Lehtinen 1998) and San Francisco, California, in the United States (Hoffman 1979).
Heterocladosoma bifalcatum is likely to be native to the Brisbane area in southeast Queensland (Mesibov 2008), but it is now found in the Sydney metropolitan area (Rowe and Sierwald 2006) and elsewhere in New South Wales (Mesibov 2006(Mesibov -2015. Solaenodolichopus pruvoti is also likely to be native to the Brisbane area (Mesibov 2014). It was first described from a town in New Caledonia and is now well established in the Perth metropolitan area in Western Australia, 3600 km from Brisbane (Mesibov 2014).
Here a new genus and species of Australian paradoxosomatid is described which we suspect is native to eastern New South Wales, but which has also been collected in urban, suburban and agricultural areas in New South Wales, Tasmania and Victoria.

Materials and methods
"Male" and "female" in the text refer to adult individuals. In this paper, the labeling of the different structures on the gonopod mainly follows that of  for convenience, and is not intended to suggest homologies with podomeres nor, necessarily, with similarly labeled structures in other papers (Car and. All specimens are stored in 75-80% ethanol in their respective repositories. Gonopod images were generated with a Leica MZ16A automontage imaging system using Leica Application Suite Version 3.7.0. Other photomicrographs are manually stacked composites, taken with a Canon EOS 1000D digital SLR camera mounted on a Nikon SMZ800 binocular dissecting microscope equipped with a beam splitter and processed with Zerene Stacker 1.04 software. Images were prepared for publication using GIMP 2.8. The locality map (Fig. 5) was prepared using ArcView 3.2 GIS.
Suppl. material 1 tabulates data for known specimen lots of the new species as of 30 March 2015 (data also available online in Mesibov 2006Mesibov -2015. Locality details are given with latitude and longitude based on the WGS84 datum. Our estimate of the uncertainty for a locality is the radius of a circle around the given position, in metres or kilometres. Abbreviations in text and Suppl. material 1 (all in Australia): AM = Australian Museum, Sydney; NMV = Museum Victoria, Melbourne; NSW = New South Wales; QVMAG = Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston; Tas = Tasmania; Vic = Victoria. Other assigned species. None. Diagnosis. In gonopod structure, Taxidiotisoma gen. n. is closest to Antichiropus Attems, 1911, Australodesmus Chamberlin, 1920, Pogonosternum Jeekel, 1965and Pseudostrongylosoma Verhoeff, 1924 in the Australian paradoxosomatid fauna (see Remarks). Differs from Antichiropus in lacking a process on the lateral surface of the femorite, from Pogonosternum in having the distal portion of the acropodite divided into two rather than three branches, from Pseudostrongylosoma in having a divided solenomere, and from Australodesmus in having a Y-shaped solenomere rather than a flagellum-and-sheath solenomere.

Order
Name. Greek taxidiotis, "traveller" + soma, Greek "body', often used as an ending for generic names in Paradoxosomatidae; neuter gender.
Remarks. Th e gonopod of Taxidiotisoma portabile sp. n. appears most similar to that of species in Antichiropus Attems, 1911, Australodesmus Chamberlin, 1920, Pogonosternum Jeekel, 1965and Pseudostrongylosoma Verhoeff, 1924, all four of which have been assigned to Antichiropodini by Jeekel (1968Jeekel ( , 1979. In all five genera a long, well-demarcated femorite abruptly ends in several prominent processes, one of which is the solenomere. In Antichiropus there may be more than one non-solenomere process, but there is always one that arises on the lateral surface of the femorite; this lateral process is lacking in T. portabile sp. n. In addition, Antichiropus species have a long, free solenomere that tends to spiral, whereas that of T. portabile sp. n. is short and Y-shaped. In Pogonosternum species there are three acropodite branches, while in Australodesmus, Pseudostrongylosoma and Taxidiotisoma gen. n., there are only two, of more or less equal size. Pseudostrongylosoma sjoestedti Verhoeff, 1924 has an undivided solenomere. In T. portabile sp. n. the solenomere is Y-shaped, i.e. divided into two subbranches spaced well apart and not greatly different in size, while in Australodesmus divergens Chamberlin, 1920 the solenomere is divided into a thin, flagellum-like branch carrying the terminus of the prostatic groove and a much larger, flattened, cowl-like branch sheathing the thinner branch. Taxidiotisoma portabile sp. n. is also characterized by a peculiar flattening of the head in lateral view, the result of depression of the clypeus. Description. Male/female approximate measurements: length ca 20/20 mm, maximum midbody width 1.5/1.8 mm. Body shiny (Fig. 1), colour in alcohol medium brown, dark brown either side of waist and dorsal portion of sides, dorsally with large, light brown patch spanning rear of metazonite and front of prozonite; antennae medium brown, darker distally; legs tan to pale brown, darker distally.
Distribution. Taxidiotisoma portabile sp. n. has been collected over a north-south range of ca 1000 km in eastern Australia (Fig. 5). A set of localities in eastern New South Wales (filled circles in Fig. 5) are in natural habitats in national parks or partly disturbed rangeland. Eight localities outside that set (unfilled circles in Fig. 5) are in cities, towns or long-cleared agricultural areas. These eight localities are numbered in Fig. 5 as follows: (1) A small area of riparian vegetation on the Macquarie River, surrounded by farmland; (2) The town of Cowra (collecting site not more exactly known), surrounded by farmland; (3) The campus of Charles Sturt University in the city of Wagga Wagga; (4) A small area of remnant native vegetation in the city of Wagga Wagga; (5) Disturbed native vegetation on a roadside adjoining a large artificial lake; (6) A recreation reserve in the suburbs of the city of Melbourne; (7) A park in the centre of the city of Melbourne; (8) Riparian parkland under a highway bridge in the town of Perth, surrounded by farmland.