Buthus tunetatus (Herbst, 1800)

Sousa, Pedro, Arnedo, Miquel A. & Harris, D. James, 2017, Updated catalogue and taxonomic notes on the Old-World scorpion genus Buthus Leach, 1815 (Scorpiones, Buthidae), ZooKeys 686, pp. 15-84 : 37

51. Buthus tunetatus (Herbst, 1800)

Scorpio tunetanus Herbst 1800: 68-69, pl. III, fig. 3 (not pl. II, fig. 2, as listed in the text); Latreille 1804: 122-124.

Androctonus (Leiurus) tunetanus : Ehrenberg in Hemprich and Ehrenberg 1829: 354.

Androctonus (Leiurus) tunetanus genuinus: Ehrenberg in Hemprich and Ehrenberg 1829: 354.

Androctonus (Liurus) tunetanus : Ehrenberg in Hemprich and Ehrenberg 1831 (pages unnumbered)

Androctonus (Liurus) tunetanus genuinus: Ehrenberg in Hemprich and Ehrenberg 1831 (pages unnumbered).

Androctonus tunetanus : C. L. Koch 1845: 15-19, pl. CCCCI (sic), fig. 968; C. L. Koch 1850: 90.

Buthus occitanus (MIS): Kovařík and Whitman 2005 (part): 106.

Buthus occitanus tunetanus: Birula 1903: 107; Birula 1910: 118; Borelli 1914a: 154-155; Borelli 1914b: 461; Borelli 1924: 4-5; Borelli 1928: 351; Giltay 1929: 196-197; Werner 1929: 30-31; Caporiacco 1932: 395-396; Schenkel 1932: 379-380; Werner 1932: 300-305; Pallary 1934: 99; Borelli 1934: 169; Werner 1934b: 84-85, fig. 4; Werner 1936: 173; Caporiacco 1937: 345; Schenkel 1949: 186; Vachon 1949c: 344-353, fig. 381-393; Vachon 1951a: fig. 670; Vachon 1952a: 272-281, fig. 381-393, 670; Vachon 1966: 211; Peréz 1974: 22; Levy and Amitai 1980: 16; El-Hennawy 1992: 98, 121; Kovařík 1995: 20; Kovařík 1997: 179; Gantenbein et al. 1998 a: 51; Gantenbein et al. 1998 b: 33-39; Kovařík 1998: 106; Fet and Lowe 2000: 97; Lourenço 2002, p. 113, 115, fig. 8-9, 11, 13; Kovařík 2002: 6; Gantenbein and Largiadèr 2003: 120, 122; Ben Othmen et al. 2004: 257; Touloun 2012: 37, 41.

Buthus (Buthus) occitanus tunetanus: Birula 1908: 123-124; Birula 1909: 507-508, fig. B; Birula 1910: 156-157; Birula 1917a: 223; Roewer 1943: 206.

Buthus tunetanus : Simon 1872: 251-252; Lourenço 2003: 897-899, fig. 57-61; Kovařík 2006: 2, 8, 10, 15, fig. 16-19.; Sadine et al. 2011: 6; Lourenço and Cloudsley-Thompson 2012: 13-16, fig. 8; Lourenço and Simon 2012: 12; Lourenço 2013: 65-66; Rossi, Tropea and Yağmur 2013: 4-5, 7

Scorpion Tunetanus (ISS): Latreille 1817: 106.

Type material.

Types lost according to Fet and Lowe (2000), Tunisia.

Distribution.

The species is currently distributed across Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia, and doubtfully in the island of Malta.

Remarks.

Because of the description of new species from Tunisia, and the lack of both type specimen and locality (beyond the country), a neotype for B. tunetanus is necessary to stabilize the taxonomy of Tunisian Buthus . As explained for B. paris , this is further complicated by recent diagnoses of B. tunetanus that differ from those offered by Vachon (1952a), and as such if Vachon’s B. tuntetanus material is found in the MNHN it should be given priority in the future designation of a neotype. Vachon (1952a) did not formally described any variety of B. tunetanus , but he again split the specimens that compose the species into four regions: 1) the typical region, corresponding to north and central Tunisia; 2) the southern montane region of Algeria, specimens from which have subsequently been described as B. tassili ; 3) the Algerian Saharan Atlas and the southern region of the High Plateau; and 4) the disjunct desert regions of southern Tunisia, western central Algeria and eastern central Morocco. It is unclear whether region 3 or 4 might either correspond to B. dunlopi or B. saharicus . As explained in Fet and Lowe (2000), the name A. (Leiurus) t. genuinus refers to the nominotypical form of the species and as such the adjective " genuinus " is not an available subspecific name.