Compsobuthus matthiesseni (Birula, 1905)

Vignoli, Valerio, Kovařík, František & Crucitti, Pierangelo, 2003, Scorpiofauna of Kashan (Esfahan Province, Iran) (Arachnida: Scorpiones), Euscorpius 9, pp. 1-7 : 2

Compsobuthus matthiesseni (Birula, 1905)

Specimens. 1 ♀ adult, No. 15, 12 August 2000; 1 adult ♂, No. 12, 11 August 2000, Kashan city; leg. V. Vignoli & P. Crucitti .

Comments. According to Fet & Lowe (2000), Compsobuthus matthiesseni is recorded from many localities in southwestern Iran, southeastern Turkey and eastern Iraq, all in the Tigris-Euphrates drainage (see Sissom & Fet 1998: 2, fig. 1). We expected to encounter this species in Kashan because this locality is given in literature (Sissom & Fet, 1998). Two adults (♂ total length: 30 mm; ♀ total length: 27 mm) were collected in Kashan city on hard soil between stones during night activity. The specimens are characterized by the evident morphological features of this taxon as the extreme sexual dimorphism, represented by the slender body of the male. Our specimens lack the dark spots, which are considered diagnostic for this taxon (Lourenço & Vachon, 2001), and are uniformly light yellow as the lectotype from Qom Province (central Iran) described by Sissom & Fet (1998).