A forgotten scorpion: the identity of Buthus flavicruris Rainbow, 1896 (Scorpiones), with notes on Urodacus manicatus (Thorell)

WA Museum Records and Supplements | Updated 6 years ago

INTRODUCTION – William J. Rainbow (1856-1919), whilst entomologist at the Australian Museum, Sydney, published a series of papers on the arachnid fauna of Australia and nearby regions. By modern standards these papers are generally imperfect but, to his credit, Rainbow illustrated the somatic and genitalic features of many of these species, a custom which was not yet firmly established amongst his contemporary arachnologists. One of these papers (Rainbow, 1896) contained the description of a new species of scorpion, Buthus flavicruris Rainbow, based upon a specimen collected from Cooma, New South Wales. This species was not cited by Koch (1977) or Fet et al. (2000), and appears to have been completely overlooked since the publication of the paper. The specimen cannot be found amongst the collections of the Australian Museum, Sydney (Mr G. Milledge, pers. comm.), and is considered lost.

Author(s) Mark S. Harvey and Erich S. Volschenk
Volume
Records 21 : Part 1
Article Published
2002
Page Number
105

DOI
10.18195/issn.0312-3162.21(1).2002.105-106