Less than 2 cm long, new Amazon scorpion is discovered in Roraima; species is one of the smallest in Brazil | Land of People

A new species of scorpion was described by researchers from the Federal University of Piauí (UFPI), the Butantan Institute and the New York Museum of Natural History. Called Microtityus adrikithe arachnid is one of the smallest known Brazilian scorpions.

According to an article published last Friday (25), in the magazine Zoosystema, the animal was found in the municipality of Cantá, in Roraima. In measurements, the size of the arachnid varied between 12.4 and 19.5 millimeters, with the female being larger than the male.

For comparison purposes, the new species, less than 2 centimeters in size, is almost 7 times smaller than the scorpion. jaguajir agamemnon (11 centimeters) and four times smaller than the yellow scorpion Tityus serrulatus (7 centimeters).

According to the researchers, all specimens of M. adriki they were collected with UV flashlights at night, on rocky outcrops and in leaf litter in the Amazon rainforest.

In addition to the color pattern that easily camouflages them in the rocks and leaves on the ground, during capture, the individuals pressed their body, legs and tail (called metasoma) against the rocks, making collection difficult for biologists.

Another behind-the-scenes story concerns the name “adriki”, which pays homage to the arachnologist Adriano Kury, a friend of the team of authors who works at the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro. Leonardo says that, at the time they began studies on the new species, the National Museum caught fire.

“The loss of the National Museum is a significant loss for Brazilian arachnology, so the individuals of several species of scorpions in Brazil that were used for description were all burned. And Adriano Kury made this collection reach where it is, so it’s a way of paying homage to him”, says Leonardo Sousa Carvalho, arachnologist at UFPI and one of the authors of the article.

Like all scorpions, the new specimen also has venom, but the substance has not yet been analyzed to draw conclusions about effects on other organisms. The conservation status of the species has also not been investigated to date, but there are signs of threats to it.

“The scorpion does not occur within a conservation unit and the area in which we found the animal is a fragment of forest south of Boa Vista (RR), which can be completely devastated by human action”, explains Leonardo.

He points out that the idea that “the smaller the scorpion, the more lethal the venom and vice versa” is not always true. According to the arachnologist, there are cases around the world in which the rule seems to work, but it does not apply to Brazilian scorpiofauna. Therefore, it is best to avoid generalizations.

It was the first time that the male genitalia of a scorpion of the genus Microtity was described and, with this, the authors hope that new works will become increasingly complete. “The idea is that in the near future the genitalia of other species will be described in order to compare and test whether, in fact, they are all different from each other”, he comments.

According to the portal of the Butantan Ecology and Evolution Laboratory, until December 31, 2023, the Brazilian scorpiofauna was composed of 182 species from 27 genera and four families: Bothriuridae, Chactidae, Hormuridae and Buthidae.

In this group, the genus Microtityus is composed of 41 species, distributed on islands in Central America and in the north of South America. Before the discovery of Microtityus adriki, the scorpion Microtityus vanzolinii – discovered in 1983 – was the only representative of the genus in Brazil.

On the other hand, more than 50% of the known species of Microtityus were described in countries such as Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

Still according to Leonardo, the study included potential distribution models of the genre Microtityuswhich aims to identify areas most likely to harbor previously unknown species and/or populations of the group.

“We put all the points of occurrence of these 42 species of the genus on the map and looked at more than 20 characteristics of the climate and vegetation of these places. Then, we use an algorithm that indicates places in the world with characteristics similar to this”, he explains.

However, the system detected that the two species of Microtityus Brazilian species occur in habitats without the expected characteristics. “This suggests that perhaps they are animals that have existed there for a long time, appearing when the climate or the distribution of scorpions was different”, he comments.