loarie 的日誌

I took a walk around Ring Mountain with my daughters. I was looking for herps and kept my eye out for California Golden Violet and Brownies

I've been looking (and bugging other people to look) for Tylos for a while with no luck. So I was super stoked to find some yesterday in Mexico. Since there's more than one species here, I did some research on New World species. I was able to convince myself I that what I found was T. niveus from the ventral view of the fifth pleonal segments. Referring to Schultz's 1970 A Review of the Species of the Genus Tylos Latreille from the New World (Isopoda, Oniscoidea) there are 5 new World Species:
T. latreille (Widespread)
T. niveus (Widespread)
T. wageneri (Widespread)
T. punctatus (Pacific)
T. spinulosus (Southern Chile)
And in his followup 1974 Terrestrial Isopod Crustaceans (Oniscoidea) mainly from the West Indies and adjacent regions 1. Tylos and Ligia, published in STUDIES ON THE FAUNA OF CURAÇAO AND OTHER CARIBBEAN ISLANDS he added T. marcuzzii which is at least in the West Indies.
But luckily the shape of the fifth pleonal segments as seen from the ventral view is pretty distinct. I've pasted in Schultz's illustrations of this character for all 6 species from these two papers and taken the liberty of coloring them in red. I also included and colored a photo from my observation which matches T. niveus well and none of the other species. (note T. wageneri's fifth pleonal segments don't even curve under enough to be visible ventrally so I colored in them on the dorsal view illustration and added a red line pointing to the ventral view illustration where they are missing.

I stopped by Ring Mountain on the way to pick my daughter up at school and thought I'd keep my eye out for a few things