Integrative taxonomy of the North American pink flat-backed millipedes (Polydesmidae: Pseudopolydesmus Attems, 1898)

Maximum-likelihood analysis of five genes supports eight species of North American Pseudopolydesmus, while prior morphology-based relationships among them are not supported.

• Why it matters: Named species in Pseudopolydesmus were defined from genital morphology but lacked genetic testing, leaving uncertain evolutionary relationships and species boundaries.
• What they did: The study newly collected 1,148 specimens, sampled all known species, and built a database of 3,462 unique specimen records; it inferred a five-gene phylogeny and analyzed 15 morphological characters using a modified PCA.
• The result: Genitalic morphology plus genetic data produced congruent species delimitation hypotheses, whereas somatic morphology was comparatively uniform and did not cluster species as well.

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