A pseudoscorpion clinging to a cave salamander: phoresy or failed predation?

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  A pseudoscorpion clinging to a cave salamander: phoresy or failed predation? Abstract Pseudoscorpions are well known for phoretic associations with arthropods, but interactions with amphibians are rarely documented. Here we report a pseudoscorpion attached to the left palpebral region of an adult male Italian cave salamander, Speleomantes italicus , observed during a visual survey in a karst cave in Tuscany, Italy. The pseudoscorpion, assigned on the basis of visible morphology and locality to Chthonius cf. elongatus , was grasping a minute cutaneous fold on the lower margin of the left upper eyelid with one chela while the salamander moved slowly over the rock surface. No handling was performed and the initial contact between the two animals was not observed. The event therefore cannot be interpreted unambiguously, but may represent opportunistic phoresy or defensive attachment following a failed predation attempt. To our knowledge, this is the first published observation of a ...

A reassessment of “Tityus” tenuimanus Banks, 1910, as a misidentified Leiurus sp. (Scorpiones: Buthidae)

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A reassessment of “Tityus” tenuimanus Banks, 1910, as a misidentified Leiurus sp. (Scorpiones: Buthidae)

Abstract


This study re-examines the holotype of “Tityus” tenuimanus Banks, 1910, previously synonymized with Buthus atlantis Pocock, 1889 by Lourenço & Francke (1984). Our results indicate that the specimen is a misidentified representative of Leiurus Ehrenberg, 1828, as it exhibits the diagnostic characters of this genus: the central lateral and posterior median carinae of the carapace fused into a lyre-shaped configuration, and tergites I–II bearing five granular carinae (a character absent in the genus Buthus Leach, 1815). Moreover, the holotype lacks one of the most distinctive characters of the genus Tityus Koch, 1836, namely the presence of a subaculear tubercle. The holotype shares several morphological features with two species described from Egypt (especially trichobothrial configuration on the fixed finger of pedipalp), Leiurus libycus (Birula, 1908) and L. aegyptiacus Lourenço & ElHennawy, 2021, both of which are only known from immature material. The absence of adult specimens for these two species, as well as the lack of a clear assessment of their intraspecific morphological variation, leads us to consider “T.” tenuimanus as a nomen dubium for the time being, and to remove it from synonymy with B. atlantis.

Mousaid, M., Yağmur, E. A., Flores, Z., Rivera, A., Lansari, A., & Bouazza, A. 2026 . A reassessment of “Tityus” tenuimanus Banks, 1910, as a misidentified Leiurus sp. (Scorpiones: Buthidae). Euscorpius, No. 431: 1-7. https://mds.marshall.edu/euscorpius/vol2026/iss431/1/