Internal phylogeny of the Chilopoda (Myriapoda, Arthropoda) using complete18S rDNA and partial 28S rDNA sequences

The internal phylogeny of the 'myriapod' class Chilopoda is evaluated for 1 2 species belonging to the five extant centipede orders, using 18S rDNA com plete gene sequence and 28S rDNA partial gene sequence data. Equally and di fferentially weighted parsimony, neighbour-joining and maximum-likelihood w ere used for phylogenetic reconstruction, and bootstrapping and branch supp ort analyses were performed to evaluate tree topology stability The results show that the Chilopoda constitute a monophyletic group that is divided in to two lines, Notostigmophora (= Scutigeromorpha) and Pleurostigmophora, as found in previous morphological analyses. The Notostigmophora are markedly modified for their epigenic mode of life. The first offshoot of the Pleuro stigmophora are the Lithobiomorpha, followed by the Craterostigmomorpha and by the Epimorpha a. str. (= Scolopendromorpha + Geophilomorpha), although strong support for the monophyly of the Epimorpha s. lat. (= Craterostigmom orpha + Epimorpha a. str.) is only found in the differentially weighted par simony analysis.