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Literature Review about centipedes More than 400 million years ago, not long after animals came to live on land, centipede already knew how to hunt in soil and litter. So, it is hard for me not to respect centipedes. ．Centipede・ is the common name given to the joint-legged animals that zoologists classify in the class Chilopoda. Although ．centi・ means a hundred, centipedes don・t have 100 feet, the actual range is from 15-191, in fact, none of them has exactly 100 pairs of leg. Indeed, all of them have an odd number of leg pairs. Till now, only one mutant individual has been found to have an even number of leg pairs( Edgecombe, 2001). After I have read 10 literatures about centipede, I understand more about centipedes and I also have found out some areas that need to have some more research on it. Below, I will mention the taxonomy and morphology of the centipedes, their habitats and living style. Besides, I will also talk about how the differences of the body structures of centipedes help in the classification of different species for itself. I will also mention what I think after I have read all these 10 literature and suggest some research that we can do in the future helping the systematics. Centipedes are in the Phylum Arthropoda, superclass Myriapoda and the class Chilopoda. There are 5 orders, which are the Scutigeromorpho, Lithobiomorpha, Geophilomorpha, Scolopendromorpha and Craterostigmomorpha. They are commonly living in leaf litter, under bark or logs, and in soil, ranging from sea level to mountaintops. They usually hunt at night. Their natural enemies are some snakes, rats and mites. They always defend themselves from their predator by shedding of legs and regenerating them in the next moult. Other defences include noxious secretions from glands on ventral body surface and producing sticky, silk-like threads from the last legs (Edgecombe, 2001). Figure 1: The systematics of cetipedes (Edgecombe and Giribet, 2002) Centipedes have segmented bodies but no distinct thoracic region as there is in insects. The dorsal surface of the centipede head is covered by a more or less rigid head capsule which bear simple ocelli or paired compound eyes (Verhoeff,1904). The centipedes also have a pair of antennae, the ratio of length/width of the single articles and the relative length of the whole antenna are characters which separate some families. The morphologically homogeneous antennae carry many hairs and bristles of various shapes and length. Their arrangement relative to each other, and their pattern and density per article seem to be typical for genera, but not for single species (Verhoeff, 1924).
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