Venezillo parvus (Budde-Lund, 1885)

Status:

GB IUCN status: Not applicable (non-native)

ID Difficulty

Identification

Venezillo parvus is a small ball-rolling woodlouse, reaching 5 mm in length. It looks rather like an immature Armadillidium vulgare, with which it shares the truncated 'square' uropods, but is readily identified by the characteristic ‘hour-glass’ shape of the telson (also seen in Reductoniscus costulatus), the equally characteristic ‘spectacled’ pigment pattern occurring on each pereionite.

A brief description of this species, with figures, is given in Gregory (2014).

Andy Murray
Keith Lugg
Keith Lugg
Finley Hutchinson

Distribution

Between 2004 and 2010 large numbers of Venezillo parvus were collected from the Eden Project (Rainforest Biome), Cornwall.  It was still present in 2020.

Habitat

Specimens were found beneath dead wood and stones and among accumulations of leaf-litter. 

In the wild it occurs widely across tropical and sub-tropical regions.

References

Gregory, S. (2014) Woodlice (Isopoda: Oniscidea) from Eden Project, Cornwall, with descriptions of species new to Britain, and poorly known British species. Bulletin of the British Myriapod & Isopod Group 27: 3-26.

BRC code

80

idBmigTaxa