C. T. Brues.
Peripatus (Macroperipatus) geayi in Panama.
Psyche 48(2-3):111-112, 1941.

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PERIPATUS (MACROPERIPATUS) GEAYI
IN PANAMA
Biological Laboratories, Harvard University As the Caribbean islands and adjacent mainland have been more carefully explored by zoologists interested in terres- trial invertebrates, information on the distribution of Onychophora in this area has slowly accumulated. A quite considerable number of species are now known to occur there, but as these animals are by no means abundant, the geographical range of the several species is poorly known. I have recently received from Dr. Ralph Buchsbaum a specimen from El Cermano? near the west coast of Panama, north of Panama City. It is one of a series of five obtained for him by a friend of Mr. James Zetek. Dr. Buchsbaum had them under observation and they served him as subjects for some remarkably fine colored motion pictures as well as for black and white photographs.
This species is Mawoperipatus geayi described by Bouvier in his "Monographie des Onychophores" in 1907 from the coast of Guiana. It was later reported from Panama by Clark1 on the basis of a specimen from La Chorrera. The present writer recorded it from the Santa Marta Moun- tains, Colombia2 on the basis of two collections. As the color of all the Neotropical species fades rapidly in alcohol, Bouvier was unable to ascertain the color of M. geayi in life, and noted no conspicuous pattern. Clark mentions "a broad, transverse, obscure yellow band" just behind the head. The specimens seen by me from Colombia also pos- sessed the pale band or "necktie," with one exception. In the living ones observed by Dr. Buchsbaum the band is cream colored7 but soon fades to nearly white in alcohol. The lsmithsonian Mix. C011.~ vol. 60, no. 17, p. 2 (1913). 2Psyche, vol. 32, p. 160 (1925).




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112 Psyche [ June-Sept.
general body color is red brown or rust colored. Morpho- logically it seems certain that there are no specific differ- ences between the type and the gaudily marked Panamanian specimens. Dorsally the body bears lozenge-shaped marks, very distinct in contracted individuals? but much less notice- able when the body is extended.
A similar conspicuous band
is present in at least two other Caribbean forms, Macro- periputus torquatus Von Kennel and Peripatm manni Brues, as well as in the Andean Oropwipatus pewviunus Brues. On June 15th, 1940, I was collecting dragonflies along the little Jicomk river in the lower valley of the Yaque del Norte in Santo Domingo. While wading in the streambed below the highway bridge (Km. 214? Monte Christi road), and crowding my way between some bushes that overhung a riffle at a narrows, I disturbed a company of these big brown Ascalaphids. A chance stroke of my net against the bushes flushed several dozen of them. They fluttered, butterfly-like, around my head for a few minutes? and then settled again on twigs overhanging the water.
Later, in the mountains near San Jose de las Matas I flushed another colony from the pendant low-hanging bough of a large tree where it overhung the riffle in the Iguamo river. These also fluttered about wildly for a time, and then reassembled on the same boughs? quite disappearing from view in the process.
JAMES G. NEEDHAM.




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