What are the main groups of myriapods?

myriapodes are members of myriapoda, subfylum arthropods. These include the well -known Millipedes and Centipedes, as well as very small and rarely to see symphhylans and pauropodans. Myriapods are the first known ground animals, with one fossil Millipede dating back to the late Silurian, 428 million years ago. It is known that he was earthly due to the presence of small respiratory holes called Spiracles. There is a possibility that myriapodes are even older, because molecular evidence suggests the main diversification episode in an even older era, Cambrian, and there are some Cambrian fossils that can be myriápodes. on the species. Both live in crumbling plant material, although Millipedes really eat the litter of leaves, while the centipede Ho prow for prey like small insects. Millipedes and Centipedes look different, because the centipede has long legs that protrude on the sides, while Millipedes usually contain legs under their body. All kinds of myriapods are earthly but Millipedes can be amphibious runhem of rare cases.

Centipedes are greedy predators, fast and toxic. They usually hunt at night and have a scary look, even if they are of little danger to people. Unusual for taxa are exclusively predatory and defining the feature of the group is a set of poisonous leading claws. Their name means "one hundred feet", although they usually have only a few tens. The smallest Centipede is nannarup Hoffmani , in the length of about half an inch, while the largest is Scolopendra Gigantea, the Amazon giant centipede, which reaches over 30 cm (12 inches) in length. It is known that the Amazon giant centipede eats bats (grab them in Mid-Legm), rodents and large spiders. Overall, there are about 3,300 known types of centipede.

Millipedes are less frightening than centipedes, both in appearance and behavior. They look like prolonged pills meandering through detritus for baking leaves. Millipedes moves slower than CentipedeAnd it has more segments and legs. The distinguishing characteristic of Millipedes is that every pair of body segments is fused into one unit, so each segment has two pairs of legs. Millipedes shows more diversity than centipedes, with about 8,000 known species. One species, illacme plenipes , a rare Millipede found in Central California, has 750 legs, most of the animal.