Buthus ibericus Lourenco & Vachon, 2004, nomen protectum

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 : 30-31

24. Buthus ibericus Lourenco & Vachon, 2004, nomen protectum

= Buthus halius (C. L. Koch, 1839) (nomen oblitum) (comb. n., syn. n.). Holotype lost according to Fet and Lowe (2000), Portugal.

Buthus ibericus Lourenço & Vachon, 2004: 88-91, fig. 31-42, Fernández 2004: 222; Teruel and Pérez-Bote 2005: 273-276, fig. 1; Armas and González-Moliné 2009: 553-554; Fet 2010: 4; Sousa et al. 2010: 207; Rossi 2012: 274-275, 277-278; Pedroso et al. 2013: 300; Teruel and Melic 2015: 6-9.

Androctonus halius C. L. Koch 1839a: 69-70, pl.CLXIII, fig. 383; Gervais 1844a: 43; C. L. Koch 1850: 90; Simon 1879: 96.

Buthus occitanus (MIS): Berejano and Pérez-Bote 2002: 59.

Type material.

1 M holotype (MNHN N° RS8605), San José del Valle (36.6247°, -5.6646°), Cádiz, Spain. Paratypes: 2 F (MNHN, N° RS8654), 1 M, 2 F (CRBA, N° CRBA-21826), and 2 F (MNCN N° 20.02/14857), all from the same locality.

Distribution.

this species seems to have a wide distribution range in the western part of the Iberian Peninsula, although the limits of its distribution remain poorly defined.

Remarks.

B. ibericus was first described from Spain and subsequently reported for Portugal (e.g. Sousa et al. 2010, Rossi 2012). Simon (1879) synonymized Androctonus halius with B. occitanus based on its type locality, which was wrongly stated to be Spain (page 98), because Simon considered B. occitanus (as B. europaeus ) to be the only good species in Spain. Koch’s original description is not by itself enough to synonymize both species. However, Koch’s fig. 383 illustration of Androctonus halius includes a basal lobe in the movable finger (Fig. 13a and B), which is the key diagnostic character for B. ibericus ( Lourenço and Vachon 2004, Rossi 2012), together with its type locality (Portugal), supports this synonymy. Nonetheless, according to the I.C.Z.N. article 23.9, the junior synonym can remain valid to maintain taxonomic stability. To our knowledge the name B. halius has not been used since 1879 (article 23.9.1.1), and more than 25 works have been published in the past 12 years by more than 10 authors using the name B. ibericus (article 23.9.1.2). Not all works are cited here because they are neither taxonomic nor faunistic. As such we propose to maintain as valid the junior synonym B. ibericus (nomen protectum) according to prevailing usage (article 23.9.1), and to consider the senior synonym B. halius a nomen oblitum. Rossi, 2012 (page 278), for B. ibericus , states erroneously "Sexual dimorphism is not noticeable in the chela manus", which is in contrast to the original descriptions of both Koch (1839) and Lourenço and Vachon (2004) and to the complementary description in Teruel and Pérez-Bote (2005). In both works it can be observed that the male manus is more bulbous than the female’s, which results in the males having a smaller length to width ratio. The type locality of B. ibericus was precisely located following the indications of Iñigo Sánchez, the original collector.