US Native Scorpion Thread

[2nscorpx]

Beautiful! How large are they? I am definitely interested in them!

 

[AzJohn]

They are about an inch. I'll try and find a few more. The area I found them in is going to get some serious snow Sun and Mon so it may be a few weeks before I get another chance. The two I got might be subadults. I've seen this species before, just never collected then. REal cool. It appears they are a bit different from other Arizona species. I've only seen them in wetter areas. These guys were near a perminent water soarce, like real near. THe ground under the rock was muddy. Given that and the high altitude I'd bet they like it damp and cool.

 

[2nscorpx]

Very interesting...hope you find some more.

 

[herpist]

We only have the Euscorpius flavicaudis here in the uk. Originally a Mediterranean scorpion which found its way over here approx 200 years ago by boat. A small scorpion only found in the Docklands area of south east England. Although I've not seen or
owned one.

 

[cacoseraph]

i'm not real great with scorpion id's. found these all in California

Anuroctonus species, maybe phaiodactylus

Vaejovis (?) species

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b287/cacoseraph/scorpion/local/local_ground_scorp_board_01b.jpg

Vaejovis (?) species

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b...on/local/local_ground_scorp_primero_04b98.jpg

Vaejovis (?) species

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b287/cacoseraph/scorpion/local/local_ground_scorp_rocky_01b.jpg

Superstitionia i found in California

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b287/cacoseraph/scorpion/Superstitionia/AmIGravidb.jpg


edit: i live in southern AZ now and have pics of more scorpions i found here. i just need to upload them to pb

 

[Kari McWest]

Howdy, y'all!
It's been forever since I ast logged on, but I found this thread and wated to chime in on a few things:
John, Your little cf paysonensis was collected where? There are several species in the area so locality would help ID:
V. paysonensis is found from the Sierra Ancha Mountains to the Mogollon Rim to Show Low to Stoneman Lake area.
V. lapidicola picks up from the Mormon Lake/Happy Jack area (we think), to Flagstaff (type locality) to Sedona, possibly as far west as Williams.
V. crumpi is found in the Bradshaw Mtns and Prescott/Jerome area... not sure how far it ranges.

Centruroides vittatus pantheriensis discussion:
All of John's pics are indeed C. vittatus, the Scorpion Formerly Known as pantheriensis, which has a "ring" around the median ocular tubercle and juveniles sport the darkened fifth metasomal segment and palms as evident in the pics. Centruroides pantheriensis was described by Stahnke in the 1950s, later in 1971 he synonymized C. gertschi under C. sculpturatus, at the end of the paper he "noted" that "probably" C. pantheriensis and C. chisosarius, both from the Big Bend region of Texas, (based on mixed litters) but it has never been "officially" synonymized, which is something I've been working on. C. chisosarius looks just like typical vittatus but the carapace is completely pigmented/marbled, and is nearly identical to C. suffusus, the bad-nasty Durango scorpion.

Centruroides exilicauda:
Only found in Baja California. The Arizona/New Mexico critter, Arizona bark scorpion, was reinstated as C. sculpturatus in the paper found here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300908404000641 I have it on PDF for free if anyone is interested.

The little thing found in juniper/pine that looks like a little Vaejovis spinigerus is indeed Vaejovis spinigerus. Populations at higher elevations tend to have a more marbled carapace, but everything else checks out. I've seen these near Douglas, Jerome, Perkinsville AZ, among other places.

Paruroctonus gracilior:
The one that Chad posted was described as Paruroctonus pallidus from Cuatro Cienegas (my avatar is one from Cuatro Cienegas). Haradon, in his 4-part revision of Paruroctonus, synonymized it under P. gracilior. The one in Chad's photo is an adult from Bolson de Mapimi, aka Mexico's famous Zona de Silencio. I will post some photos of more tpical gracilior. Funny thing about gracilior is that over its huge distribution, from Aguascalientes, Mexico, to near Del Rio, Texas, north to Roswell, NM, SW to Rodeo, NM/Portal, AZ. I consider it a Chihuahuan Desert Marker species, its distribution is almost exactly along the lines dilineated for the Chihuahuan Desert (like Larrea tridentata, etc). Throughout its range it can be completely pale, in sand dunes; or have a darkened interocular triangle, like C. vittatus, OR a pale interocular triangle, like H. arizonensis. The big male in Chad's pic is about 60mm... the typical adult gracilior is only 40-45 mm.

I think I should wrap it up!
kj

---------- Post added 03-25-2012 at 05:59 PM ----------

Oh, and except when it comes to known undescribed species, it is best to post the locality so we can be sure of ID.
=)

---------- Post added 03-25-2012 at 06:07 PM ----------

What's the best way to post pics? Via photobucket?

 

[cacoseraph]

i really like photobucket. you can upload reasonably large pictures to a free account and arbitrarily large for ~$20 a year. it has automatically generated code for img or url tags and i believe autogenerates thumbnails and the code to use them. you can generally make one post and use it on almost any forums unless they have some kind of weirdo formatting or rules about the number of images per post. you also get some stats on your pics for free on pb and i am a bit of a stat wh--enthusiast. iirc, they even have mass uploader options and you can make a very intricate directory structure for keeping all your pictures organized. iirc they support tags, title, and descriptions for all the pics you upload also

i do believe they have non-exclusive like, IP rights to all the media you upload but that is pretty standard and has been part of the EULA and/or TOS for every free media host i have ever actually looked into. youtube definitely does it. even facebook does it

 

[2nscorpx]

@Kari, thanks! That information is very helpful...

 

[AzJohn]

Hi Kari, my little unknown Vaejovis was found near Stoneman Lake. Knowing they are found in that area is a big help.

 

[Warren Bautista]

Vaejovis spinigerus by WarrenSoBa, on Flickr

 

[AzJohn]

Somthing newish. Collected about 30 feet from my house on the Navajo Reservation North East of Winslow AZ.
Paruroctonus cf utahensis

 

[2nscorpx]

Nice! Thanks for putting a locality.

 

[cacoseraph]

Serradigitus species (?) from Tucson, AZ. i dig on the small species. especially when you figure something is subadult and then find the best white mold when it is feeding time



Centruroides sculpturatus, mom and babies... and sprout

 

[2nscorpx]

The Serradigitus looks like S. joshuaensis, I could be very certain, because of the patterns on the carapace. Nice find! Especially the sprout!

 

[Taysha]

What sort of scorps can I find around pensecola fl?

 

[Risky]

Thank you for posting pics of the environments and descriptions. That's very helpful.

 

[cacoseraph]

little baby Vaejovidae on some long grain

 

[Galapoheros]

haha, that's an good pic.

 

[AzJohn]

HOw did you get that picture?

 

[cacoseraph]

what would be a $100 point and shoot on macro mode shooting through a $1 magnifying lens

i keep meaning to make another youtube to really show the process, but you can check out. also, i should point out i am teaching my brother that i live with how to do this and he still isn't as good as me... there is a bit of subtlety to it and in all likelihood your first products are going to suck. there are tricks to holding the lens, using the flash for pics, pretty much everything. videos are MUCH easier to shoot like this compared to pictures

you can sort of see them lenses in effect here. in this vid i am getting more magnification with the lenses
[YOUTUBE]i3A9A3icGqg[/YOUTUBE]

and here. in this video i am more or less just using the lens to let my camera focus on something it wasn't programmed for
[YOUTUBE]kcLbHxUQ3WY[/YOUTUBE]