Developmental stability in geophilomorph centipedes

Measures of fluctuating asymmetry, the random and not inheritable deviations from perfect bilateral symmetry, are routinely used as indices of developmental stability. The almost homonomous trunk of geophilomorph centipedes presents another kind of symmetry: the series of segments are arranged according to a translational symmetry. We found that the segmental pattern of some metric characters presents high levels of local disparity between contiguous segments, these irregularities resembling the effect of developmental noise affecting a more regular underlying pattern. We present a preliminary study of the developmental stability of geophilomorph segment differentiation, dealing with segmental patterns of metric characters in the trunk of two species. We found good correlation between the developmental stability in segmental differentiation expressed as translational asymmetry (TA) and the degree of developmental stability estimated by measures of traditional (bilateral) fluctuating asymmetry (FA).