Schendyla antici

Schendyla antici is a species of soil centipede in the family Schendylidae. This species is notable as one of only six species in the order Geophilomorpha to feature centipedes with only 29 pairs of legs, which is also the minimum number recorded in the genus Schendyla. No other species in this genus features so few legs.

Discovery
This species was first described by three biologists from the University of Belgrade (Dalibor Z Stojanović, Mirko Ševićin, and Slobodan E Makarov) in 2024, based on specimens extracted from soil samples from Medvednik mountain in western Serbia. These specimens include not only a male holotype collected in 2011 and fourteen paratypes (five males and nine females) collected in 2021 but also seven more specimens (two males, five females, and three juvenile females) collected in 2023. The specific name of S. antici honors the Serbian myriapodologiist Dragan Antić, who discovered the first specimen and participated in the collection of most of the others.

Description
This species exhibits sexual dimorphism in leg number: All eight male specimens have 29 pairs of legs, and all seventeen female specimens have 31 leg pairs. This species is whitish with a pale yellowish color on parts of the head, antennae, mouthparts, forcipular segment, and claws of the walking legs. The adult specimens range from 4.5 mm to 8.0 mm in length, and the juvenile female specimens measure about 4 mm long. The adult females (with an average length of 6.5 mm) tend to be larger than the adult males (with an average length of 5.8 mm long). These centipedes are so small that the original description refers to S. antici as a "dwarf" species.

Diagnostic features of this species include not only its small size and modest number of legs but also a distinctive set of other traits. These traits include minute denticles on the first article of the forcipule, a rudimentary claw on the ultimate legs, and the absence of ventral pore-fields on the sternites. These features distinguish S. antici from other species of the genus Schendyla.

For example, only three species in this genus approach S. antici in terms of leg number: S. verneri (with 31 pairs of legs), S. walachica (with 33 or 35 leg pairs in each sex), and S. armata (with as few as 33 pairs in females and 35 in males). The species S. verneri is small (9 mm to 10 mm in length) and has small denticles on the first article of the forcipule but also has some scattered pores on the anterior sternites and no claws on the ultimate legs. The species S. walachica has rudimentary claws on its ultimate legs but also features pore-fields on some sternites, has no denticles on the first article of the forcipule, and is twice as long as S. antici. Finally, S. armata is small (5 mm to 11 mm in length) and has rudimentary claws on its ultimate legs and no sternal pore-fields but also features denticles on the first article of the forcipule that are distinctly robust rather than small.