''Planipapillus'' is a genus of
velvet worms
Onychophora (from , , "claws"; and , , "to carry"), commonly known as velvet worms (for their velvety texture and somewhat wormlike appearance) or more ambiguously as peripatus (after the first described genus, '' Peripatus''), is a phylum of e ...
in the family
Peripatopsidae
Peripatopsidae or the Southern Velvet Worms are one of two extant families of velvet worm. This family includes more than 140 described species distributed among 41 genera, but some authorities deem only 131 of these species to be valid. The Fre ...
, whose species are found in eastern
Victoria
Victoria most commonly refers to:
* Queen Victoria (1819–1901), Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India
* Victoria (state), a state of Australia
* Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, a provincial capital
* Victoria, Seychelles, the capi ...
and southeastern
New South Wales
New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...
,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
.
They are unique in that the males of this genus may bear patches of reduced papillae on the head, posterior to the eyes; the generic name refers to this fact, and likewise they have been vernacularly referred to as lawn-headed onychophorans. All species in this genus are
oviparous
Oviparous animals are animals that reproduce by depositing fertilized zygotes outside the body (i.e., by laying or spawning) in metabolically independent incubation organs known as eggs, which nurture the embryo into moving offsprings kno ...
and have 15 pairs of legs.
Species
The genus was erected in 1996 by
Amanda L. Reid to accommodate four contemporarily described species, of which ''P. taylori'' was designated the
type species
In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...
.
Reid described and assigned a further eight species to ''Planipapillus'' in 2000,
and Douch and Reid described an additional species in 2023,
producing the count of 13 species recognised today. These species are listed below:
* ''
Planipapillus absonus''
Douch & Reid, 2023
* ''
Planipapillus annae''
Reid, 2000
* ''
Planipapillus berti''
Reid, 2000
* ''
Planipapillus biacinaces''
Reid, 1996
* ''
Planipapillus biacinoides''
Reid, 2000
* ''
Planipapillus bulgensis''
Reid, 1996
* ''
Planipapillus cyclus''
Reid, 2000
* ''
Planipapillus gracilis''
Reid, 2000
* ''
Planipapillus impacris''
Reid, 2000
* ''
Planipapillus mundus''
Reid, 1996
* ''
Planipapillus taylori''
Reid, 1996
* ''
Planipapillus tectus''
Reid, 2000
* ''
Planipapillus vittatus''
Reid, 2000
References
Onychophorans of Australasia
Onychophoran genera
Taxa named by Amanda Reid (malacologist)
{{Onychophora-stub