Pandinops platycheles ( Werner, 1916 )

Kovařík, František, Lowe, Graeme & Elmi, Hassan Sh Abdirahman, 2017, Scorpions of the Horn of Africa (Arachnida: Scorpiones). Part XIII. Review of Pandinops hawkeri, P. peeli, P. platycheles, and P. pugilator (Scorpionidae), Euscorpius 254, pp. 1-20 : 4-9

Pandinops platycheles ( Werner, 1916)

( Figs. 1–14, 50, Table 1)

Pandinus platycheles Werner, 1916: 89–90 ; Lampe, 1917: 199; Birula, 1927: 88; Moriggi, 1941: 95; Jäger, 1998: 87.

Pandinus (Pandinoides) platycheles: Vachon, 1974: 953 ; Lamoral & Reynders, 1975: 564; El-Hennawy, 1992: 100, 136; Kovařík, 1997: 183; Fet, 2000: 468–469.

Pandinoides platycheles Rossi, 2015: 13 .

Pandinus (Pandinoriens) platycheles Prendini, 2016: 8 .

TYPE LOCALITY AND TYPE REPOSITORY. Abyssinia

(now Ethiopia), Harrar; MWNH.

TYPE MATERIAL EXAMINED. Ethiopia, Harrar , 1909, 3♂ (holotype No. 1071a and paratypes No. 1071b, Figs. 1–14), leg. W. Russert , MWNH.

DIAGNOSIS. Total length of males 67–70.3 mm, female unknown. Base color uniformly reddish brown/ orange, legs yellow or orange and telson yellow, pedipalp chela orange to reddish brown. Carapace smooth in middle, several granules distributed sparsely along margins only. External trichobothria on patella number 14 (5 eb, 3 esb, 2 em, 1 est, 3 et); ventral trichobothria on patella number 24–27; internal trichobothria on chela number 6–7, ventral trichobothria on chela number 10– 11. Pedipalp chela hirsute. Pedipalp chela dorsally tuberculated/granulated, without pointed granules. Chela internally smooth, sparsely granulated mainly in anterior part, with two smooth short longitudinal carinae indicated by several solitary granules. Chela of male length/ width ratio is 1.60–1.63. Pectinal teeth number 13–14 in males. Sternite VII tuberculate to granulate. Metasomal segments I–II ventrally tuberculate, III–V granulated; metasomal segments I–IV with ventral carinae absent or indicated only. Length to width ratio of male metasomal segment V is 1.94–2.14.

COMMENTS. Werner (1916: 89–90) based Pandinus platycheles on three males from which, according to the labels, one was designated as "typus, No. 1071a " (holotype, Figs. 1–2) and two as "paratypoide, No. 1071b " (paratypes, Fig. 11). Vachon incorrectly placed this species in subgenus Pandinoides ( Vachon, 1974: 953) , but when he personally studied the types in 1980, he labeled them correctly as members of subgenus Pandinops (see Figs. 1–2, 11). Unfortunately Vachon never published this taxonomic conclusion. Subsequent authors kept the species in Pandinus (Pandinoides) , but recently Prendini (2016) transferred it to Pandinus (Pandinoriens) . In 2016, Rossi studied these types and labels and added two labels in which he incorrectly designated the holotype as the lectotype, and paratypes as paralectotypes (see Figs. 1–2, 11). Rossi may have published that Pandinus platycheles belongs to the genus Pandinops , in his own private journal Arachnida, Rivista Aracnologica Italiana which is not publically accessible to the scorpion research community (see Rein, 2017), so we were unable to review and discuss it.

When the first author (FK) prepared the revisions of Pandinus sensu lato (Kovařík, 2009; Kovařík, 2016; Kovařík et al., 2017), he was not permitted to personally study the types of P. platycheles and according to incorrectly determined non-type specimens from a museum collection, he cited a population which belongs to another species as P. platycheles . It is now evident that Pandinus platycheles Werner, 1916 is Pandinops platycheles ( Werner, 1916) and the specimens which were cited as Pandinurus platycheles ( Werner, 1916) in Kovařík et al. (2017: 86–89, figs. 158–159, 179, 200, 357–389, 394, 396) belong to the species Pandinurus riccardoi ( Rossi, 2015) (= Pandinus (Pandinoriens) bottegoi Rossi, 2015 , syn. by Kovařík et al., 2017: 87).

AFFINITIES. The described features distinguish Pandinops platycheles from all other species of the genus. P. platycheles is morphologically similar to P. turieli Kovařík, 2016 but these two species occur in remote areas separated by montane massifs ( Fig. 50) which act as vicariant barriers between all known widespread scorpion species found in the region (e. g. Parabuthus abyssinicus Pocock, 1901 versus P. hamar Kovařík et al., 2016 and P. pallidus Pocock, 1895 , see fig. 204 in Kovařík et al, 2016: 55; or Hottentotta minax (L. Koch, 1875) versus H. trilineatus (Peters, 1861) , see fig. 158 in Kovařík et Mazuch, 2015: 35). These two species can be morphologically unequivocally separated by: 1) metasomal segments I–II ventrally tuberculate in P. platycheles vs. smooth in P. turieli ; 2) sternite VII tuberculate to granulate in P. platycheles vs. bumpy without granules in P. turieli ; 3) chela of male length/ width ratio is 1.60–1.63 in P. platycheles vs. 1.68–1.71 in P. turieli ; 4) length to width ratio of male metasomal segment V is 1.94–2.14 in P. platycheles vs. 1.90–1.93 in P. turieli .