Making this thread to, hopefully, call more attention to a very easily overlooked and often misidentified bug! Thereuonema tuberculata, a scutigeromorph centipede identified as being introduced to the US fairly recently (~2017 or so, https://doi.org/10.1674/0003-0031-177.1.162) but seemingly very widespread, from the east coast, with records as far west as Nebraska (https://zenodo.org/record/6507037), and south down to Texas (based on mis-identified specimens seen on bugguide and inat) and simply always misidentified as the more well known Scutigera coleoptrata
The two species can be fairly easily differentiated though, with Thereuonema tuberculata having a darker coloration compared to Scutigera coleoptrata, orange tubercles along the back, and slightly shorter legs proportionally. The two species seem to have differing habitat preferences as well, with Thereuonema rarely if ever found indoors, and often found perching on leaves or tree trunks at night while hunting
Yeah T. tuberculata seems to be present throughout most of temperate and subtropical east asia? Loads of Scutigeromorph diversity in asia in general though. I think the US only has a handful of native species in the southwest
This will be useful information for centipede ID-ers. Have you added this information to the appropriate pages on BugGuide? There will typically be a link to BugGuide from an iNat species page, in the About tab, under the More Info column.
I see that the species page on BG just has a reference back to the present Forum topic: https://bugguide.net/node/view/2179428
The info you present should be readily accessible in both locations; don’t send readers on an unnecessary internet chase. I’d suggest that the primary information should be explicitly included on the BG pages.
I didn’t make that bugguide page actually! Someone must have seen this thread and done so, though I did throw an individual I saw back in May onto there in… july or june maybe?
Nice! Great to see that this species has been confirmed to be here, I’ve been seeing them for a while here, and was wondering why nobody had noticed. I photographed a couple last year, and posted them to Bugguide https://bugguide.net/node/view/2109216/bgimage
