Rhinotus purpureus

Rhinotus purpureus

''Rhinotus purpureus'' is a species of millipede in the family Siphonotidae. It is native to the Caribbean but is also found in Central America, North America, South America and in some tropical glashouses in Europe and probably elsewhere in the world.
Rhinotus purpureus Sorting through some old images I stumbled on this weird looking and cutely pink millipede again (strange head shape for a millipede!) that I took in the tropical hothouse Burgers' Bush in Arnhem, Netherlands while looking for woodlice in 2009. At the time I made no effort to ID it, but I just now realized that this species has probably not been recorded, or at least not published for the Netherlands before(!) Fauna Europaea lists this species for England only, where it is known from the Tropical Rainforest Biome at Eden Project (2003) and the tropical glasshouses at RHS Wisley Gardens (2015), but according to Decker et al. (2014) it is also known from the hothouse "Palm Garden" in Frankfurt am Main, Germany since 2008. So here it is, recorded for the Netherlands as well, since 2009 :o) Millipede,Polyzoniida,Rhinotus,Rhinotus purpureus,Siphonotidae

Appearance

It is a small but distinctive purple/pinkish millipede with a peculiarly shaped pointed triangular head bearing two dark ocelli

Predators

An article by Saporito et al. (2003) suggests that this millipede may well be the source of an alkaloid previously only known from the skin extracts of some species of poison frogs.

References:

Some text fragments are auto parsed from Wikipedia.

Decker, P.; Reip, H.; Voigtländer. K. (2014) Millipedes and centipedes in German greenhouses (Myriapoda: Diplopoda, Chilopoda). - Biodiversity Data Journal, vol.2, pp.1-43
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4031429/pdf/biodiversity_data_journal-2-e1066.pdf

Saporito, R.A.; Donnelly, M.A.; Hoffman, R.L.; Garraffo, H.M.; Daly, J.W. (2003) A siphonotid millipede (Rhinotus) as the source of spiropyrrolizidine oximes of dendrobatid frogs. - J. Chem. Ecol., vol.29(12), pp.2781-6.

Read, H.J. (2008) Records of millipedes from Kew gardens and the Eden Project, including descriptions of three species. Bulletin of the British Myriapod & Isopod Group, vol.23, pp.27-35.
http://www.bmig.org.uk/sites/www.bmig.org.uk/files/bulletin/BullBMIG23%20p27-35%20Read%20Kew%26Eden.pdf


Taxonomy
KingdomAnimalia
DivisionArthropoda
ClassDiplopoda
OrderPolyzoniida
FamilySiphonotidae
GenusRhinotus
SpeciesR. purpureus
Photographed in
Netherlands