Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 External morphology and functional anatomy
- 3 The integument, moulting and regeneration
- 4 The musculature and endoskeleton
- 5 The nervous system and sense organs
- 6 Sensory responses and related behaviour
- 7 Endocrinology
- 8 The alimentary canal
- 9 The poison glands
- 10 Feeding and digestion
- 11 The respiratory system
- 12 The circulatory system
- 13 Pigments
- 14 Connective tissue and fat body
- 15 Head glands
- 16 The Malpighian tubules and nephridia
- 17 The reproductive system and reproduction
- 18 Post-embryonic development and life history
- 19 Epidermal glands and their function, defence and predators
- 20 Parasites
- 21 Physiology and ecology
- 22 Taxonomy
- 23 Relationships of the chilopod orders
- 24 The classification of the Chilopoda
- Bibliography
- Index
21 - Physiology and ecology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 External morphology and functional anatomy
- 3 The integument, moulting and regeneration
- 4 The musculature and endoskeleton
- 5 The nervous system and sense organs
- 6 Sensory responses and related behaviour
- 7 Endocrinology
- 8 The alimentary canal
- 9 The poison glands
- 10 Feeding and digestion
- 11 The respiratory system
- 12 The circulatory system
- 13 Pigments
- 14 Connective tissue and fat body
- 15 Head glands
- 16 The Malpighian tubules and nephridia
- 17 The reproductive system and reproduction
- 18 Post-embryonic development and life history
- 19 Epidermal glands and their function, defence and predators
- 20 Parasites
- 21 Physiology and ecology
- 22 Taxonomy
- 23 Relationships of the chilopod orders
- 24 The classification of the Chilopoda
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
A number of topics of an ecological nature namely behaviour, food and feeding, respiration, the reproductive system and reproductive behaviour, life-histories, predators, and defence mechanisms and parasites have been the subject of previous chapters.
Many of the remaining ecological data are fragmentary and widely scattered and any account must needs reflect the interests of the particular author and his reading and cannot be comprehensive.
Water relations of terrestrial centipedes
Water loss experiments
A number of investigators have shown that centipedes lose water rapidly at low humidities. Auerbach (1951) investigated the ‘desiccation death time’ of various centipedes from Michigan, USA (Table 17): Roberts (1956) and Vaitilingham (1960) measured ‘survival times’ of British woodland centipedes at six different humidities; their results for 55 per cent relative humidity are shown in Table 18. Lewis' (1963) results, for six British species are shown in Table 19. Palmen & Rantala (1954) found the geophilomorph Pachymerium ferrugineum in Sweden to survive for between 38 and 109 hours at 34 per cent relative humidity at 20 °C.
It is clear from these results that, by and large, geophilomorphs are more resistant to desiccation than lithobiomorphs or scolopendromorphs. Unfortunately there are no data for scutigeromorphs.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Biology of Centipedes , pp. 375 - 406Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1981