A Final Publication from David Remsen

The late David Remsen, who directed the MBL’s Marine Resources Center, was as keen a naturalist as can be found anywhere on Earth. He grew up in Woods Hole, swimming in its bays and turning over rocks to see what crawled beneath. Later, as chief of MBL’s specimen-collecting operations, he continued to amass an encyclopedic knowledge of the animals and plants living in and around Woods Hole.

Remsen was a prolific contributor to iNaturalist, a website for sharing observations of species. Between 2008 and 2022, he published 2,741 observations that run the gamut from birds to flowers to insects to mushrooms to marine life.

So when Remsen spotted a relatively huge milliped near the MBL cottages, he probably instantly knew it hadn’t been sighted before in these parts. His first observation of the insect in Massachusetts was recently published in collaboration with an entomologist colleague, Chris McAllister.

Here is the species’ page on the website of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), where Remsen was formerly a senior program officer.

Citation:

Chris T. McAllister and David Remsen (2024) A New State Record for the Milliped, Howellaria infesta (Diplopoda: Polydesmida: Xystodesmidae). Entomological News, DOI: 10.3157/021.131.0201.