Centipede taxonomy is beset with problems. There is a paucity of adequate monographs so that whereas some areas of the world are well catered for, for example the British Isles (Eason, 1964), France (Brölemann, 1930), South Africa (Lawrence, 1955) and Madagascar (Lawrence, 1960), others are almost totally neglected. Attems' monographs on the Geophilomorpha (1929) and Scolopendromorpha (1930a), the former brought up to date by Attems in 1947, provide invaluable starting points for workers in these orders. Lists of new species are given in the Zoological Record and the Centre International de Myriapodalogie in Paris publishes annually a Liste des travaux parus et sous presse for the previous year but this gives titles only. There are no monographs for lithobiomorphs or scutigeromorphs and as a result these orders may well have been neglected by some taxonomists.

Many taxonomic descriptions are inadequate because too few characters have been taken into consideration: it is impossible to come to any objective conclusion about the relationship of some African species of Lamyctes (Lithobiomorpha) because the characters used to diagnose one species by one author are not used at all in the description of a second species by a second author. Difficulties arise also when the species is described on the basis of a few specimens or when the species is very widely distributed and known from a few widely separated localities. As further material of such species is examined, their status has to be re-evaluated.