Abstract
The first species of Symphyla was described in 1763 and many hundreds of papers on the group have since appeared with almost 200 species having been described. However, very few of them deal with material from Asia (Scheller, 1971, 1988, Scheller & Golovatch, 1982, Scheller & Mikhaljova, 2000) and not a single species has been recorded from Iran. Now one of us (M.R. Kavianpour) has collected them for the first time from there. They appeared in a study of soil-living mites in gardens with pomegranates and grapes in the vicinity of Shahreza in the Esfahan Province, about 500 km south of Teheran, 1800 m asl., and were obtained from Berlese extractions of soil samples down to a depth of 20–30 cm.
References
Hansen, H.J. (1903) The genera and species of the order Symphyla. Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science 47, 1–101.
Scheller, U. (1971) Symphyla from Ceylon and Peninsular India. Entomologica scandinavica Supplement 1, 98–187.
Scheller, U. (1978) The Pauropoda and Symphyla of the Geneva Museum V. A review of the Swiss Scolopendrellidae (Myriapoda, Symphyla). Revue suisse de Zoologie 85(2), 247–263.
Scheller, U. (1988) Two new species of Symphyla from the Krakatau Islands and the Ujung Kulon Peninsula (Myriapoda: Symphyla: Scolopendrellidae, Scutigerellidae). III. Invertebrates. Zoological Expedition to the Krakatau Islands 1984 and 1985. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, London (B)322, 401–411.
Scheller, U. & Golovatch, S.G. 1982. Myriapods of the class Symphyla in the USSR. (In Russian, English summary p. 145). Zoologicheskiĭ Zhurnal, 61(1), 143–145.
Scheller, U. & Mikhaljova, E.V. (2000) New records of Symphyla (Myriapoda) from the Russian Far East. Arthropoda Selecta 9(1), 29–30.