Accepted by T. Wesener: 27 Jun. 2017; published: 23 Aug. 2017 ZOOTAXA ISSN 1175-5326 (print edition) ISSN 1175-5334 (online edition) Copyright © 2017 Magnolia Press Zootaxa 4311 (2): 233–240 http://www.mapress.com/j/zt/ Article 233 https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4311.2.4 http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:E246BBD3-FCE0-4CB8-9442-70DC421E3D96 The identity of Amplaria nazinta (Chamberlin, 1910): a century-old millipede mystery resolved (Diplopoda, Chordeumatida, Striariidae) WILLIAM A. SHEAR 1,4 , PHILIP NOSLER 2 & PAUL MAREK 3 1 Professor Emeritus, Department of Biology, Hampden-Sydney College, 1950 Price Drive, Farmville, VA 23901. E-mail: wshear@hsc.edu 2 8921 SE Wooded Hills Court, Damascus, OR 97089. E-mail: philnosler@gmail.com 3 Department of Entomology, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061. E-mail: pmarek@vt.edu 4 Corresponding author Abstract Amplaria nazinta (Chamberlin, 1910) is redescribed from freshly collected male specimens and its identity as a species of Amplaria Chamberlin, 1941 is confirmed. We amend the diagnosis of Amplaria, and for the first time report the pres- ence of a limbus in a chordeumatidan millipede. Key words: Myriapoda, Pacific Northwest, Oregon Introduction In 1910, near the beginning of his more than 50-year career in myriapod taxonomy, Ralph Vary Chamberlin published a paper entitled “Diplopoda from the Western States,” one of the earliest and perhaps most useful publications describing the millipede fauna of the Pacific Coast and Rocky Mountains. The paper included descriptions of two new genera and 18 new species. When males were available, Chamberlin provided illustrations of their gonopods and secondary sexual modifications that have allowed subsequent taxonomists to easily identify them. Unfortunately, some of the species were described from female or juvenile specimens, which later presented difficulties, since most of the morphological characters used to discern species boundaries in millipedes are found in the mature males. Further compounding these problems, the type specimens of many of the 18 species were either never formally designated or have since been lost. Nevertheless, the identities of all of the species described in the paper have been definitively established, with a single exception: Striaria nazinta Chamberlin, 1910, which was described from one female collected in Portland, Oregon, USA. Chamberlin’s description of S. nazinta is detailed, but because of the uniformity of morphology among female striariids of similar size and geographic provenance, the identity of the species has remained unclear. A type specimen is not known to exist, and until now, no new material of mature males from at or near the type locality has been collected. In 1941, Chamberlin named a new genus of striariids, Amplaria, and moved nazinta to it, along with the type species, Striaria eutypa Chamberlin, 1941. Causey (1958), based on the description by Chamberlin (1910) and a female specimen from Portland collected in 1957, kept the species in Amplaria but questioned the validity of the genus. Nearly 50 years later, Shear and Krejca (2007) rediagnosed and reviewed Amplaria and noted that A. nazinta could not be conclusively identified with females alone and that its position in Amplaria was questionable in comparison to several other taxa now known (but as yet undescribed) from northwestern Oregon and adjacent Washington. Thus the taxonomic identity of A. nazinta remained uncertain until the second author sampled millipedes over a two-year period at the East Buttes in Portland, Oregon, a unit of the city’s municipal park system, and was able to collect mature male and female specimens of a species of Amplaria consistent with Chamberlin’s 1910 description and Causey’s (1958) notes. These specimens confirm that nazinta belongs in Amplaria. A redescription is provided below.