Centipedes

The centipedes we label under Scolopendra  belong to one of the oldest formally named arthropod genera. Carl Linnaeus established Scolopendra  in 1758 in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae , the starting point for modern zoological nomenclature. Of the handful of species he originally placed there, only Scolopendra gigantea  and S. morsitans  are still recognized in the genus today, with S. morsitans  later chosen as the official type species by the International Commission

The animals we now call Ethmostigmus  were originally described in the 1800s under Scolopendra  – for example, the current type species Ethmostigmus trigonopodus  started life as Scolopendra trigonopoda  Leach, 1817. The genus Ethmostigmus  was erected by R. I. Pocock in 1898, to hold a distinctive group of scolopendrids with large rounded spiracles and certain head/forcipule characters. Attems (1930) later fixed Scolopendra trigonopoda  Leach, 1817 as the type species of Eth