People from all over flock to Madera Canyon to look up and spot rare birds. But if they were to look down instead, they might find something new there too.
A new species of scorpion has been identified as inhabiting the canyon – one of two found there in as many years – and named for the local mountain range.
Psuedouroctonus santarita was first described by Richard Ayrey and Michael Soleglad in the December 2015 issue of scorpion research journal Euscorpius. P. santarita appeared in the publication along with P. kremani, a new species from the Santa Catalina Mountains, also being described by Ayrey and Soleglad.
P. santarita, which was found near Bog Springs in Madera Canyon, is about an inch long with a golden to dark rust-brown color. A lot of determining what is or isn't a new species has to do with minute differences in body structure and DNA evidence, but P. santarita is also distinguishable from similar species because the “palms” of its front pincers are fairly wide, Ayrey said Tuesday.
Ayrey, who has been studying scorpions since 1972, and graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in wildlife ecology, has specialized in species found in Southern Arizona's sky islands, where scorpions had become isolated on mountaintops from other species for ages. Although Madera Canyon isn't a sky island, the principle is the same, with P. santarita, for example, being separated from other scorpions of the same genus for at least 8.1 million years.read more
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