Zephronia cf. viridescens Attems, 1936

Srisonchai, Ruttapon, Sutcharit, Chirasak & Likhitrakarn, Natdanai, 2021, The giant pill-millipede genus Zephronia Gray, 1832 from Thailand, with a redescription of Z. siamensis Hirst, 1907 and descriptions of three new species (Diplopoda, Sphaerotheriida, Zephroniidae), ZooKeys 1067, pp. 19-56 : 19

Zephronia cf. viridescens Attems, 1936

Zephronia viridescens Attems, 1936: 180; Jeekel 2001: 22.

Zephronia cf. viridescens - Wongthamwanich et al. 2012b: 913; Sukteeka and Thanee 2015: 18.

Distribution and habitats.

Originally, this species was reported from Tavoy, Lower Burma (Moti Ram) by Attems (1936) (= Dawei, Tenasserim).

Remarks.

Although ecological studies by Wongthamwanich et al. (2012b), and Sukteeka and Thanee (2015) have reported ' Zephronia cf. viridescens ' from northern and northeastern Thailand, these works do not provide clear and unique characters for the species, and the specimens are not available for re-examination. The original description by Attems (1936) clearly stated that one of the diagnostic characters of Z. viridescens is its greenish body color. These contrast with the ' Zephronia viridescens ' material examined by Wongthamwanich et al. (2012b: fig. 4) and Sukteeka and Thanee (2015: fig. 2), which display a distinct brownish body color. Not only can the brown color be used to discriminate Z. viridescens from Thai ' Zephronia viridescens ' material, but the distribution is remarkably different. Z. viridescens was originally described from Dawei in Myanmar while ' Zephronia viridescens ' specimens have been recorded to inhabit the northern and northeastern regions of Thailand. It seems likely that the ' Zephronia viridescens ' specimens belong to another species and are distinct from all other known species. Therefore, further systematics study based on fresh specimens from northern and northeastern Thailand is necessary in order to confirm the existence of Z. viridescens in Thailand. At this moment, we thus exclude this nominal species from the Thai millipedes.