Flat Orange on Oak wood
Location: Grass Valley, CA
November 1, 2011 6:46 pm
We have these all over the oak wood outside our home. I have not been able to find out what it is. They only seem to be on the oak that is on the ground.
Signature: Brandi Minium

Millipedes

Hi Brandi,
These are Millipedes that feed on decaying organic matter and possibly the fungus that grows on decaying wood.  We believe we have identified them as Brachycybe rosea based on BugGuide.

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centipede from India
Location: Tamil Nadu, india
February 12, 2011 1:49 pm
Hello dear bugman, I am back with a few more finds… if you find the time to look at them – lovely!
This looks like a centipede… about 6-8cm long, black-yellow. It was found in dry grassland in Tamil Nadu, India.
Signature: Thanks, Helen

Millipede

Hi Helen,
This is not a Centipede.  It is a Millipede.  You can tell by looking closely and seeing that there are two pairs of legs per body segment while Centipedes have but one pair per body segment.  Centipedes and Millipedes are in different classes in the same Subphylum, Myriapoda.  According to BugGuide, the word Myriapoda has its origin:  “From Greek myrias (μυριας) 10,000 (i.e., countless) plus podos foot, leg.“  Millipedes are in the class Diplopoda.

Millipede: 2 pairs of legs per body segment.

Karl provides a species identification
Hi Daniel and Helen:
This millipede looks very similar to the Yellow-spotted millipede (a.k.a. the Almond-scented Millipede or Cyanide Millipede), Harpaphe haydeniana, a native of the Pacific coast of North America that is well represented on the Bugguide site. The internet has a profusion of images suggesting that this species also occurs in India and various other Asian locations, but there is also considerable confusion regarding whether or not this species actually exists in Asia (by introduction I would assume). I did find several references in scientific papers suggesting that it does, at least in India, but I also found sites that indicated it is commonly confused with the Asian species Asiomorpha coarctata. There are other Asian species that also look similar but I suspect it is one of these two (to me H. haydeniana looks like a closer match). I think it probably has been introduced to India, but given the degree of confusion I don’t think I would fully trust any internet image identified as a H. haydeniana from Asia.
Karl

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What’s this centipede/millipede?
Location: Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
November 7, 2010 8:37 pm
Hello! I’ve lived in the same house for 3 years now and just started seeing these bugs around in the last year. (S. Florida, Ft. Lauderdale) I think it’s odd that I did not see them for the first 2 years we lived here. The largest ones are about 2-2.5 inches long and about the diameter of a pencil. They curl up into a ball when startled but will also crawl over my hand easily. I grew up in this area and don’t recall seeing them in any other house I’ve lived in. I live in a single family home in a well-maintained residental neighborhood. We do have a canal in the backyard (but so did other houses I lived in). Thank you!
Signature: Jen from S. Florida

Rusty Millipede

Hi Jen,
We did not have an opportunity to post your letter on the day it arrived, and we decided to try to research your questions this morning.  We learned on BugGuide that this is a Rusty Millipede, Trigoniulus corallinus, and that it is an imported species from Asia according to a comment by Rowland Shelley on BugGuide.  We would like to research this a bit more to find out when it was introduced and how far it has spread in North America.  Right now, BugGuide only reports it from Florida.  Though we do not have access to the entire article, BioOne indicates that an article entitled INTRODUCTION OF THE MILLIPED, TRIGONIULUS CORALLINUS (GERVAIS, 1847) (SPIROBOLIDA: TRIGONIULIDAE), IN FLORIDA, U.S.A was published in Entomological News in 2005.

Rusty Millipede

Costa Rican millipede
April 7, 2010
Hi bugman :]
I thought you might like this picture of a millipede we found in Costa Rica in the Monteverde cloud forest region. She had babies that were so tiny you could barely see them hiding above her legs and underneath her outer shell. When you bother her, she secretes a fluid containing cyanide. It smells like almonds. I looked in your millipede section and she looks a lot like some of the millipedes there, but many of those were from the U.S. Do you know what kind of millipede she is?
Steiv
Monteverde, Costa Rica

Millipede

Dear Steiv,
Thanks for sending your Millipede photo with the observational data.  We are curious about your comment about the babies because we were not aware of Millipedes transporting their young about.  We tried to research this behavior, and we found two sources with identical information.  According to the Millipedes at Animal Corner website:  “Millipedes lay their eggs in the soil. Some species make individual cases for their eggs out of chewed-up leaves. In some species, the female, and occasionally the male, guard the eggs until they hatch. Although young millipedes resemble small adults, they are usually have no legs when they first hatch from the egg. After they molt, or shed their exoskeleton for the first time, they have six body segments and three pairs of legs.“  We found the identical information here at a Diplopoda Behavior and Reproduction website.  We wonder, perhaps, if there were mites or some other creature living on the Millipede.