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Abstract

The milliped genus Narceus Rafinesque, 1820 (Spirobolida: Spirobolidae) occupies parts or all of 2 Canadian provinces, Québec and Ontario; every U.S. state east of the Mississippi River; and 9 states to the west including Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Records are detailed for the "western" states and New England and include the first from Minnesota, Connecticut, Delaware, and Maine; occurrence is projected for southeastern Minnesota and the Delmarva Peninsula. The genus presently comprises 2 valid species that are endemic to Florida—N. gordanus (Chamberlin, 1943) and N. woodruffi Causey, 1959—and 2 of uncertain status that occur throughout the generic range and are referenced as the "N. americanus/annularis complex"; geographic evidence suggests greater diversity, particularly in the south, and a 2nd generic revision is in order to update the existing one by Keeton (1960). Records cluster within a large, semicontinuous area whose northern, southern, and western range extremes, respectively, are Saint-Nicolas, Lévis Census Division, Québec; Key West, Monroe County, Florida, and northeastern Duval County and Rockport, Aransas County, Texas; and Garner State Park, Uvalde County, Texas. The eastern limit is the Atlantic Ocean, and records are available from Cape Cod and Tuckernuck Island, Massachusetts; Long Island, New York; Cape Hatteras, North Carolina; and James Island, South Carolina. The projected western boundary, based on peripheral localities, angles southwestward from Omaha, Nebraska, to Uvalde County; and the northern boundary passes through central Iowa and Wisconsin (encompassing the Door Peninsula) and the southern periphery of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The lone Minnesota locality, from Lyon County in the southwest, lies substantially north of the projected border in Iowa and well west of the expected area of occurrence in southeastern Minnesota. The northernmost record west of the Mississippi River, it may represent an allopatric population that extends westward into eastern South Dakota.

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