Millipedes (Diplopoda) are an easily overlooked group of animals because of their secretive lifestyles in soil or under bark, but they are remarkably diverse and of great importance in the process of decomposition. There are over 60 species in Britain, so offer good variety, but without too daunting a challenge for the beginner. They offer a good introduction to the study of a whole realm of other important soil based invertebrates.

Tutor information: Paul Richards works as Ecological Monitoring Officer for Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust and was formerly a researcher in urban biodiversity at the University of Sheffield and Senior Curator of Natural History at Museums Sheffield. He has nearly 40 years experience as a professional zoologist, curator and ecologist specialising in ground invertebrates. He is Sorby Natural History Society recorder for Millipedes, Centipedes, Woodlice, Harvestmen, and Pseudoscorpions and author of the BMIG guide mentioned above as well as the FSC guide to British Harvestmen and a new atlas of Dragonflies of the Sheffield area. He is an active contributor to a number of Facebook invertebrate groups and is a passionate advocate of biological recording.

Paul with give an introduction to millipede identification followed by an interactive question and answer session.

Please book your space via Eventbrite and you will be sent information on how to join the webinar.

This session will run on Zoom. If you are new to Zoom you will need to create a Zoom account and download their software. This is all free and you can do so here: https://zoom.us/ You can use a laptop/desktop computer, smartphone or tablet and it isn’t necessary to have a webcam or microphone to participate.

Further info on how to join a zoom meeting can be found here.