Euscorpiinae Laurie, 1896

Soleglad, Michael E. & Fet, Victor, 2003, High-level systematics and phylogeny of the extant scorpions (Scorpiones: Orthosterni), Euscorpius 2003 (11), pp. 1-175 : 105

Subfamily Euscorpiinae Laurie, 1896

Type Genus. Euscorpius Thorell, 1876 .

Composition. This monotypic subfamily includes a single genus, Euscorpius (Soleglad & Sissom, 2001) .

Distribution. Europe, Asia ( Turkey, Caucasus), Africa (Mediterranean Sea coast). Introduced to England, Yemen, Uruguay (Fet & Sissom, 2000a).

Taxonomic history. For a long time, the genus Belisarius (now in Chactidae ) was placed here (largely due to geographic proximity) until it was transferred to Superstitioniidae by Stockwell (1992). The genus Euscorpius includes four subgenera (Fet & Sissom, 2000a; Gantenbein et al., 1999); our ongoing revision (Fet & Soleglad, in progress) is likely to justify a genus rank for some if not all of them.

Biogeographic history. Representatives of Euscorpius inhabit a wide variety of habitats from sea level to high mountains (over 2000 m in the Alps, Balkans and Taurus). A complex taxonomy of this genus follows its ancient history around the changing Mediterranean Sea (Birula, 1917a, 1917b) and only recently became a subject of a detailed study using rich morphological data and modern DNA techniques (Gantenbein et al., 1999, 2000, 2001b, 2002; Fet, 2003; Fet et al., 2002, 2003c; Fet & Soleglad, 2002).

Diagnosis. See Soleglad & Sissom (2001) for details.