Despite this inattention by professional biologists, considerable interest exists on myriapods among the general public on all continents. Amateur chat lines exist on the Web; large-bodied millipedes and centipedes are imported from tropical regions of Asia, Africa, and South America and sold in pet stores throughout the US; and a substantial number of people engage in husbandry. If one searches for millipedes or centipedes in a search engine on the Web, a host of sites turn up, but much of the information on them is inaccurate or incomplete. A need exists for a professionally run website with factually accurate information that is retrievable by search engines, and this site has been established to fill this void.

This site provides both general information on millipedes and centipedes, and results of scientific research conducted by J. E. Bond and students in the Biology Department at East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA, and R. M. Shelley, Curator of Terrestrial Invertebrates, North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences (NCSM), Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. There are introductory pages on both millipedes and centipedes with general information and ones devoted to ongoing research projects at both institutions; the latter involve extensive collaborations with colleagues both in the US and other countries and continents, and will be updated periodically as new information becomes available. There is also a photo gallery page where, through active field work, we will attempt to eventually provide quality color pictures of representatives of the major taxa occurring in the New World and will post ones sent to us by colleagues. We will also have a page of links to other sites with photos and accurate information on these organisms.