History

The review and prospective of Chilopoda Centipedes from Taiwan

Japanese Colonization 

Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895 under the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Taiwan is a uncultivated land in Japanese academic community. Many biological scholars came to Taiwan continually for collection, investigation and research. They published a large number of papers about many new species from Taiwan.

Yoshioki Takakuwa was the person who succeeded to Dr. K. W. Verhoeff and became a pioneer of Myriapodology in Japan, and then he taught in the Tokyo University of Education (today University of Tsukuba). He researched Chilopoda centipedes of East Asia from1920s to 1940s. He published many papers and books about taxonomy, anatomy and biogeography, which were many great contributions to Chilopoda studies. However, there is no indication that he had ever came to Taiwan to collect; he obtained specimens of centipedes from his Taiwanese friends. He reported that there are 39 new species and new records by Taiwanese specimens. Takashima (1954) reported that most Takakuwa’s specimens were destroyed by an air-attack of Tokyo during World War II in 1945. There are four books Takakuwa wrote in Japanese about the classification of Chilopoda: “Geophilomorpha” (1940), “Scolopendromorpha” (1940), “Lithobiomorpha” (1941), and “The Anatomy and Taxonomy of Scutigeromorpha” (1955). In his books, he described in detall the morphological characters and diagnoses of Japanese and Taiwanese species. They are great references to study Asian Chilopoda centipedes. Dr. Takakuwa murmured Banzai in his sick bed, he was ill at that time and deceased on 9 March 1960 at the age of 88.

The ROC on Taiwan

Liberation from Japan came with the end of the Second World War in 1945.

Yu-hsi Moltze Wang was the pioneered Chinese scholar of Myriapodology, he graduated from the department of Biology, Fudan University, Shanghai in 1937. After ten years, he went to American in 1947, and researched Myriapod under the supervision of Dr. R. Chamberlin. He achieved his PhD degree of the University of Utah in 1950. He came to Taiwan, and got a position at the department of Zoology, National Taiwan University, Taipei in 1953. He studied the Myriapoda of Taiwan and South Asia. Dr. Wang participated at the 10^th International Congress of Entomology, in Montreal, Canada (1956), at the 11^th in Vienna, Austria (1958), at the 12^th in London (1963). He wrote 31 scientific papers in English. Dr. Wang moved to Singapore, and taught at the University of Nan-Yang in 1964, and lived until his death on 18 January 1968 at the age of 58. He recorded 23 genera 49 species of Chilopoda from Taiwan.

Since 1999, Jui Lung Chao is studying the Chilopoda of Taiwan under the supervision of Dr. H. W. Chang at the department of Biological Sciences, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung. Mr. Chao participated at the 12^th International Congress of Myriapodology in South Africa (2002), at the 13^th in Norway (2005).