Overview
- A Virginia Tech–led team published a paper in Current Biology on Friday that integrates new DNA and fossils to produce the first evolutionary tree covering every living millipede order.
- Researchers obtained DNA from the two last unsampled groups by collecting Siphoniulus neotropicus in Los Tuxtlas, Mexico, and Hirudicryptus canariensis in the Canary Islands and sequenced hundreds of genes across 82 species.
- Combining those genomes with morphological data from 29 fossils and large-scale computation allowed the team to place Siphonocryptida inside an existing lineage and to locate Siphoniulida among its close relatives.
- Molecular dating moves millipede origins back to about 460 million years ago—roughly 35 million years before the oldest known millipede fossils—and traces the origin of their defensive chemicals to about 260 million years ago.
- Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and done with multiple museums and universities, the study both completes a long-standing taxonomic gap and creates a framework to speed discovery and classification of many still-undescribed millipede species.