Compsobuthus, Vachon, 1949

Fet, Victor, Gantenbein, Benjamin, Gromov, Alexander V., Lowe, Graeme & Lourenço, Wilson R., 2003, The first molecular phylogeny of Buthidae (Scorpiones), Euscorpius 4 (4), pp. 1-10 : 3

Compsobuthus , Mesobuthus , Liobuthus , and Kraepelinia

This strongly supported (93 % bootstrap) monophyletic group includes genera either monotypic and endemic for Central Asia and Iran ( Liobuthus , Kraepelinia ), or diverse and widely distributed in many Palearctic arid landscapes ( Compsobuthus is found from North Africa to Iran; Mesobuthus , from the Balkans to China). The branching order of this group of genera strongly supports Compsobuthus as a sister group to the other three genera. Note that of this group only species of Compsobuthus are found in Africa; others are almost exclusively Asian. Relationship of the ingroup Mesobuthus , Liobuthus and Kraepelinia was not resolved. Biogeographic observations in Turkmenistan ( Fet, 1994) indicate that Liobuthus is a widespread endemic genus of Central Asian sand deserts, highly adapted to a psammophile way of life ( Fet et al., 1998). Conversely, Kraepelinia is a reclusive small genus burrowing in clay soils of southern Turkmenistan and Iran, and known from only a couple of localities ( Fet, 1984, 1989, 1994). It also has highly derived features including a remarkable “stocky” pedipalp chela ( Vachon, 1974, Fig. 235- 239). Both of these are highly specialized genera endemic to desert Central Asian deserts. On the other hand, Mesobuthus is widely distributed, with a center of its diversity in Iran and Central Asia. Phylogenetic studies are now under way of the genus Mesobuthus (Gantenbein et al., in progress), revealing an order of branching that implies western Palearctic forms of this genus are ancestral, and forms distributed further east and north in Central Asia, Mongolia and China are derived. Modern range of the genus Mesobuthus represents the northern limit of scorpion distribution in Asia ( Gromov, 2001). This corresponds to the general trend of the evolution for Central Asian desert biota ( Kryzhanovsky, 1965; Fet, 1994).