ECOLOGICAL NICHE MODELS BY TITYUS SERRULATUS LUTZ & MELLO, 1922 AND TITYUS STIGMURUS (THORELL, 1876) (ARACHNIDA: SCORPIONES)

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ECOLOGICAL NICHE MODELS BY TITYUS SERRULATUS LUTZ & MELLO, 1922 AND TITYUS STIGMURUS (THORELL, 1876) (ARACHNIDA: SCORPIONES)

Summary

Scorpions are venomous animals with high plasticity and can serve as models for biogeographical, natural history, and evolutionary studies. Ecological niche modeling can help in understanding essential characteristics of the geographic distribution of species, as well as allowing the prediction of future distribution patterns. Our objective was to model the ecological niche of the scorpion species *Tityus serrulatus * and *Tityus stigmurus* , as well as to identify the variables that influence their distribution in different biomes and their range limits in the Amazon, Caatinga, and Cerrado biomes. Data were obtained from 12 Brazilian arachnological collections. Bioclimatic variables were obtained from the WorldClim database, and niche modeling was implemented using the Maximum Entropy algorithm. The results showed that the Atlantic Forest biome influences the distribution of the species and is the only biome that presents an overlap in distribution between *T. serrulatus* and *T. stigmurus *. For T. serrulatus , the most important variable was the average annual temperature, which is generally high. For T. stigmurus , temperature variation had a greater influence. The temperature limits differ between the species: T. serrulatus apparently does not tolerate high temperatures, while T. stigmurus suffers from constant temperature variations.


da Silva, C. de OA, Brazil, TK, & da Silva, RML (2026). ECOLOGICAL NICHE MODELS BY TITYUS SERRULATUS LUTZ & MELLO, 1922 AND TITYUS STIGMURUS (THORELL, 1876) (ARACHNIDA: SCORPIONES). Revista De Geopolitics , 17 (5), e2453. https://doi.org/10.56238/revgeov17n5-093