Meeting Abstract
Species in the scorpion genus Centruroides Marx, 1890 (Scorpiones: Buthidae) are good candidates to study ecological niche partitioning due to their habitat plasticity, widespread geographic distribution, and presence of cryptic species. Currently, three species belonging to three subgroups of Centruroides are distributed along the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico, presenting a rare opportunity to study niche partitioning within a single genus. We examined the environmental, substrate, and habitat preferences of Centruroides flavopictus, Pocock, 1890, Centruroides gracilis, Latreille 1904, and Centruroides rileyi, Sissom 1995 within La Estación Biología Los Tuxtlas west of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Our results demonstrate habitat partitioning occurs along humidity, temperature, and elevational gradients, with C. gracilis preferring habitats of low humidity and high temperature and is predominantly found on the substrate in human-mediated habitats, ““C. flavopictus”” exhibited a larger range of humidity and temperature preferences but was found within secondary and primary forest, and C. rileyi had the greatest specificity of low temperature and high humidity on trees within primary forest. Furthermore, C. rileyi was found significantly higher in trees than C. flavopictus. This study represents the first example of niche partitioning within a genus of arachnid, and the first description of the ecological niche in an arboreal-specialist scorpion.
