Ommatoiulus sabulosus

469. Ommatoiulus sabulosus (Linnaeus, 1758)

Julus sabulosus Linnaeus, 1758.

Iulus aimatopodus Risso, 1826.

Archiulus sabulosus auct.

Palaioiulus sabulosus auct.

Schizophyllum sabulosum auct.

Archiulus irregularis Attems, 1927.

Ommatoiulus irregularis auct.

AL, AT, BA, BE, BG, BY, CH, CZ, DE, DK-DEN, ES-SPA, FI, FR-FRA, GB-CI, GB-GRB, GB-NI, HR, HU, IE, IT-ITA, LT, LU, LV, MC, MK, NL, NO-NOR, PL, RO, RU-KGD, RU-RUC, RU-RUE, RU-RUN, SB, SE, SI, SK, UA. Most of Europe, from the Mediterranean to the Boreal Zones and east to the Ural Mts.

Eurytopic, with an altitudinal range of nearly 3000 m, though it is particularly associated with warm habitats and sandy areas. It is often abundant in sand dune systems and is closely associated with heaths but may be found on limestone as well as sandstone. It is common in more or less open woods on lighter soils but, in Belgium at least, it is almost never observed in large closed forests. Yet, in Eastern Europe it is dominant in some Quercus and Picea stands in the Byelovezskaya Puzcha (Tarasevich 1992) and it occurs in the taiga. Adults wander into a very wide variety of habitats from lowland woodlands and grasslands to alpine meadows, usually during the summer. In winter it appears to be more restricted to damper places occurring in the leaf litter and superficial layers of well drained soil. There are several references to its occurrence in wetlands and on moors, including peat bogs.

One of the most widely dispersed millipedes in Europe, from 38° N in Calabria to 64° N in the taiga of Finland. It has not yet been recorded from Greece, some major Mediterranean islands and much of Iberia, where many other species of Ommatoiulus occur. Records from Portugal are not reliable (N. Akkari, pers. comm.) It is active in summer when many other species are dormant, spatially very patchy and it undergoes large population fluctuations. Mass swarming has been observed on many occasions (e.g., Ehrnsberger 2002; Helb 1975; Kania & Tracz 2005; Voigtländer 2005). An entirely black form without the two characteristic orange dorsal stripes, O.s. aimatopodus (Risso, 1826), is known from some southern departments of France. We treat O. irregularis as a synonym of O. sabulosus on the advice of Nesrine Akkari, who has seen Attems’ type specimen. O. irregularis was included in the Italian checklist (Strasser & Minelli 1984) with a question mark, but excluded from the later list of Foddai et al. (1995). Numerous other forms have been named but are not listed here.