Buthus zeylensis Pocock 1900
Creators: name: Kovařík, František
name: Šťáhlavský, František
name: Elmi, Hassan Sh Abdirahman
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2020
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Arachnida
Scorpiones
Buthidae
Buthus
Buthus zeylensis

description: Buthus zeylensis Pocock, 1900, stat. n.
(Figures 101, 140–175, 184–185, 190, 194, 207–209, 210,
Tables 2–3)
Buthus occitanus zeylensis Pocock, 1900: 56–57.
Buthus occitanus berberensis (in part): Levy & Amitai, 1980: 16, 21; Fet & Lowe, 2000: 95 (complete references list until 1998).
Buthus berberensis: Lourenço, 2008: 46; Sousa et al., 2017: 38 (in part).
TYPE LOCALITY AND TYPE REPOSITORY. Somaliland, Zeyla; BMNH.
MATERIAL EXAMINED. Somaliland, Gerissa, 10°36'01"N 43°26'07"E, 245 m a. s. l. (Locality No. 19SH = 17ST), 11.- 12.IX.2017, 22♂ 7♀ 21juvs. (Nos. 1294, 1295, 1297), FKCP, 1♂ 1♀, RTOC, 3.VII.2019, 8♂ 3♀ 12juvs. (No. 1686), FKCP, leg. F. KovařÍk.
DIAGNOSIS. Total length 37–54 mm. Base color yellow dark pattern reduced; telson brown; chelicerae pale yellow without reticulation. Pedipalp movable fingers bear 10–11 rows of granules, with 12 outer and inner denticles and fixed finger with 10–11 outer and inner denticles. Chela of pedipalp narrower in male, its length to width ratio 3.4–3.6 in females and 4.1–4.3 in males. Telson bulbous, with aculeus shorter than vesicle. Pectinal teeth number 25–29 in females and 28–35 in males.
COMMENTS. Levy & Amitai (1980: 21) synonymized Buthus occitanus zeylensis Pocock, 1900 with Buthus occitanus berberensis Pocock, 1900. They argued that “examination of Pocock´s types and of additional material from Somalia showed that these two forms are in fact the two sexes of the same subspecies, the first the male, the second the female.” We studied in detail a large collection of Somaliland specimens collected during expeditions of 2011–2019; this study, including cytogenetic and DNA analysis, confirmed that these two taxa are valid species. Here, we restore Buthus occitanus zeylensis Pocock, 1900 from synonymy and elevate it to species rank.
COMMENTS ON LOCALITIES AND LIFE STRATEGY. In 2019, two of us (FK, HE) visited the city of Zeyla, the type locality of Buthus zeylensis Pocock, 1900. It is an extremely hot place, with heavily salted soils. We collected scorpions several km from the city (11°19'31.2"N 43°22'16.9"E) and found there Hottentotta polystictus (Pocock, 1896), Microbuthus litoralis (Pavesi, 1885) (first record for Somaliland), Orthochirus afar KovařÍk et Lowe, 2016 and Parabuthus granimanus Pocock, 1895 (topotypes) but no Buthus specimens. Buthus zeylensis is common in Gerissa, a very hot, sandy semidesert area (Fig. 101) where we recorded also H. polystictus, O. afar, and P. granimanus, but also Compsobuthus somalilandus KovařÍk, 2012, Gint gubanensis KovařÍk et al., 2018 (type locality), and Neobuthus gubanensis KovařÍk et al., 2018 (type locality).
description: Published as part of Kovařík, František, Šťáhlavský, František & Elmi, Hassan Sh Abdirahman, 2020, Scorpions of the Horn of Africa (Arachnida Scorpiones) Part XXIII Buthus (Buthidae), with description of two new species, pp. 1-32 in Euscorpius 307 on pages 27-31, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4648379