Se registra por primera vez la presencia en la isla antillana de la Española del escorpión bútido Centruroides platnicki Armas 1981, conocido hasta el presente de las Bahamas más meridionales (islas Turcas y Caicos incluidas). Se observaron numerosos ejemplares adultos y juveniles de ambos sexos en dos localidades de la provincia de Montecristi (noroeste de la República Dominicana), siempre en vegetación desértica sobre suelos arcillosos aluviales

Seiter, Michael

Teruel, Rolando

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76  Revista Ibérica de Aracnología, nº 29 (31/12/2016): 76–78.                                                                                             NOTA CIENTÍFICA Grupo Ibérico de Aracnología (S.E.A.). ISSN: 1576 - 9518.                                                                            http://www.sea-entomologia.org  Centruroides platnicki Armas, 1981 (Scorpiones: Buthidae), a new addition to the scorpion fauna of Hispaniola, Greater Antilles  Rolando Teruel1 & Michael Seiter2   1 Centro Oriental de Ecosistemas y Biodiversidad (BIOECO), Museo de Historia Natural "Tomás Romay"; José A. Saco # 601,     esquina a Barnada; Santiago de Cuba 90100. Cuba. rteruel@bioeco.cu 2 Department of Integrative Zoology, University of Vienna; UZA1 Althanstraße 14; 1090 Vienna. Austria & Institute of Zoology,    Department of Integrative Biology and Biodiversity Research, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences; Gregor Mendel    Straße 33; 1180 Vienna. Austria. michael.seiter@univie.ac.at.   Abstract: The Buthid scorpion Centruroides platnicki Armas 1981 is recorded for the first time from the Caribbean island of Hispa-niola. The species was so far known only from the southern Bahamas (including the Turks and Caicos Islands). Numerous adult and juvenile specimens of both sexes were found at two localities of Montecristi province (north-western Dominican Republic), always in desert vegetation on alluvial clayey soils. Key words: Scorpiones, Buthidae, Centruroides, first record, Hispaniola, Greater Antilles.  Centruroides platnicki Armas, 1981 (Scorpiones: Buthidae), nuevo para la escorpiofauna de La Española, Antillas Mayores  Resumen: Se registra por primera vez la presencia en la isla antillana de La Española del escorpión bútido Centruroides platnicki Armas 1981, conocido hasta el presente de las Bahamas más meridionales (islas Turcas y Caicos incluidas). Se observaron nume-rosos ejemplares adultos y juveniles de ambos sexos en dos localidades de la provincia de Montecristi (noroeste de la República Dominicana), siempre en vegetación desértica sobre suelos arcillosos aluviales. Palabras clave: Scorpiones, Buthidae, Centruroides, primer registro, La Española, Antillas Mayores.      The buthid scorpion Centruroides platnicki was described by Ar-mas (1981) on the basis of eight specimens from four islands and cays of the Bahamas Archipelago sensu lato: the holotype female and four juveniles from Mayaguana (Bahamas sensu stricto), plus one male from Long Cay, another female from West Caicos and one subadult of undisclosed sex from a cay southwest of North Caicos (all from Caicos Islands, in Turks & Caicos). After this, the single documented finding of this apparently rare species was published 20 years later by Armas (2001), who recorded an addi-tional male and female pair from Salt Cay, in Turks Islands, thus, C. platnicki remains so far the single endemic scorpion from Ba-hamas, being widespread across its southeastern distribution (fig. 1). Armas (1981, 2001) emphasized the remarkable morphological resemblance of C. platnicki to Centruroides nitidus (Thorell, 1876), an endemic species from the nearby island of Hispaniola, even though the morphological characters stated as diagnostic for both, sound reliable enough to their accurate distinction. During early September 2016, we found populations of the genus Centruroides Marx, 1899 in two localities of Montecristi Province, northwestern Dominican Republic: 1) El Morro (also named Islote del Fraile, a barren coastal hill north of San Fernando de Montecristi city, in homonymous municipality, 19°53'38"N - 71°39'26"W; 50–80 m), and 2) Hato del Medio (near Villa Sinda, in Villa Vásquez municipality, 19°41'35"N - 71°18'12"W; 65 m). These specimens were similar at first sight to C. nitidus, but showed several discordant characters that immediately suggested they belonged to a different species. Using a Nikon Coolpix S8100 digital camera, we took high-resolution, full-color photographs of all specimens, which were later compared to our voucher specimens and photo banks. This process revealed that those Hispaniolan specimens are conspecific with C. platnicki, whose occurrence in Hispaniola had been over-looked so far; see for example, the most recent catalog of the scor-pions from this island: Santos et al., (2016). Herein we present several of these photos (fig. 2): two adult males and three adult females of different size-classes, plus one subadult. For comparison purposes, we include also one adult male and female pair of C. platnicki (fig. 3) from the personal collection of František Kovařík, with the following label data: BAHAMAS: Eleuthera Island (new record); May 2000; J. Křeček. Both species are indeed very similar to each other on mor-phological grounds: they both share the same basic size, coloration, degree of robustness of pedipalps and metasoma, pectinal tooth counts, shape of sternite V, and armature of pedipalp chelae (cari-nation, intercarinal sculpture, setation and number of denticle rows of fingers). Thus, it is not difficult to understand that the occurrence of C. platnicki in Hispaniola has gone unnoticed so far due to its misidentification as C. nitidus, despite its presence in voucher collections for more than 30 years (see below). Nevertheless, both species can be distinguished on the basis of three non-sexually dimorphic characters: 1. Development of metasomal carinae: very strong and coarsely crenulate to dentate in C. platnicki; absent to very weak and smooth to subcrenulate in C. nitidus. This is especially evident on dorsolateral and lateral supramedian carinae of segments II–IV. 2. Intercarinal sculpture of metasoma: densely and coarse-ly granulose in C. platnicki; essentially smooth to sparsely granu-lose in C. nitidus. 3. Shape of pedipalp fingers: long, with lobe/notch combi-nation moderately strong in C. platnicki; short, with lobe/notch combination very strong in C. nitidus. This character can be evalu-ated in adult specimens only. Very scarce data are available on the natural history of C. platnicki, only that it has been collected under rocks in sandy scrub (Armas, 2001), and implicitly that no other scorpion species have ever been recorded in literature from the same Bahaman islands and cays where it is known to occur. In both Hispaniolan localities where we found C. platnicki, it lives in desert scrub and seems to be a microhabitat generalist (fig. 4): individuals were observed in similar numbers on the ground (under rocks and fallen palm leaves) and in the vegetation (under barks of trees, bushes and fence posts, inside dry cacti), and also in cracks and crevices of rock walls of inhabited houses. At both localities it lives syntopically with the buthid Rhopalurus princeps (Karsch, 1879) and the scorpionid Cazierius politus (Pocock, 1898). 77   Fig. 1. Known geographical distribution of Centruroides platnicki: type locality (white square with black cross), other previous literature records (white squares), and present new records from Eleuthera and Hispaniola (black squares, the former corresponds to the northernmost one). The Hispaniolan localities are depicted in greater detail in the close-up below: El Morro (1), Botoncillo (2) and Hato del Medio (3).                     Actually, C. platnicki had long been collected from this area of Hispaniola, but it went overlooked so far because it was misi-dentified as C. nitidus: we examined an adult female from the collection of Instituto de Ecología y Sistemática, which was col-lected in the mid 1980's at Botoncillo (a small village in the out-skirts of Villa Vásquez, only about 5 km northwest of Hato del Medio), with such identification label handwritten by L. F. de Armas in 1987. Thus, most if not all literature records of C. ni-tidus from Montecristi Province are most likely based upon actual misidentifications of C. platnicki: La Solitaria, Guayubín munici-pality (Armas & Marcano Fondeur, 1987: 13), 3 km south of Montecristi, homonymous municipality (Armas, 2002: 64), Villa Vásquez, homonymous municipality (Armas, 2002: 64), Gozuela and 3 km south of Copey, Pepillo Salcedo municipality (Armas, 2002: 64); the same holds true also for those records from the arid lowlands of the adjacent part of Valverde Province (Armas & Marcano Fondeur, 1987; Armas, 2002). Its presence is also pre-dictable and expected at least in adjacent parts of Haiti, taking into account that all this northern part of Hispaniola is a continuous of landscape and vegetation. With the hereby presented records of C. platnicki from His-paniola, the Bahamas archipelago loses its single endemic scorpion species. Consequently, it becomes as well the second non-endemic scorpion known from Hispaniola and the eight member of the genus confirmed to occur here. It further increases the total number of Recent Hispaniolan scorpions and members of Buthidae to 47 and 38, respectively.   Acknowledgments First of all, we are greatly indebted to our friends Frederic Schramm (Germany) and Johannes Nigl (Austria) for their helpful assistance during the expedition that revealed the occurrence of this species in Hispaniola. Also, we deeply thank our friend František Kovařík (Prague, Czech Republic), for his kind permission to use his photos and personal data of the specimens of C. platnicki herein depicted in Figure 3. Last, but not least, we thank two anonymous referees for the careful peer-review of the manuscript.  References ARMAS, L. F. DE 1981. El género Centruroides Marx, 1889 (Scor-piones: Buthidae) en Bahamas y República Dominicana. Poe-yana, 223: 1-21. ARMAS, L. F. DE 2001. Centruroides platnicki Armas, 1981 (Scor-piones: Buthidae): first record from Turks Islands, Bahamas. Revista Ibérica de Aracnología, 4: 27-28(*). ARMAS, L. F. DE 2002. Alacranes de República Dominicana. Centru-roides nitidus (Thorell, 1876) y Microtityus lantiguai Armas & Marcano Fondeur, 1992 (Scorpiones: Buthidae). Revista Ibérica de Aracnología, 5: 61-66(*). SANTOS, G. DE LOS, L. F. DE ARMAS & R. TERUEL 2016. Lista anotada de los escorpiones (Arachnida: Scorpiones) de La Española (República Dominicana y Haití). Novitates Caribaea, 10: 1-22. (*) Available in www.sea-entomologia.org          78  Fig. 2. Live individuals of Centruroides platnicki from Hispaniola, complete dorsal view: a) large adult male from Hato del Medio; b) standard adult male from El Morro; c) large adult female from Hato del Medio; d) standard adult female from El Morro; e) small adult female from El Morro; f) juvenile female from Hato del Medio. Fig. 3. Standard adult topotypes of Centruroides platnicki, complete dorsal and ventral views: a) male; b) female. Photos courtesy František Kovařík. Fig. 4. Habitat and microhabitat of Centruroides platnicki in Dominican Republic: a) coastal desert scrub at El Morro; b) tree barks at Hato del Medio. 

Centruroides platnicki Armas, 1981 (Scorpiones: Buthidae), a new addition to the scorpion fauna of Hispaniola, Greater Antilles

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Centruroides platnicki Armas, 1981 (Scorpiones: Buthidae), a new addition to the scorpion fauna of Hispaniola, Greater Antilles

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