New and Previously Known Millipeds of Panama

Although the Panama Canal Zone and the adjacent areas of Panama are parts of Central America frequently visited by scientists, the millipeds reported from there are few in number, as compared with those reported from Guatemala or nearby Costa Rica.Only nine species were known from the whole of Panama in 1922 when Chamberlin published "The Millipeds of Central America" and added three new species.In subsequent papers (1925, 1940, 1941, 1947), he increased the number by 1 established species and 38 species purporting to be new.The two largest of these papers (1925, 1940) have no illustrations of critical structures of any species, and many of the descriptions are brief and founded on females or even immature specimens, the most extreme case being three moults from maturity, so that identification of the species is at best difficult, and several may require rearing young of the same stage as the type specimen for exact identity of the mature animal.In recent years short papers containing descriptions of Panamanian millipeds have been published by Hoffman (1950Hoffman ( , 1951Hoffman ( , 1953Hoffman ( , 1954Hoffman ( , 1955) ) and Loomis (1958Loomis ( , 1959)), and the number of species ascribed to the area has reached a total of 62, some of which are not considered valid members of the fauna for one reason or another, as will be shown.77