@scorpyuri.bsky.social
Early Career Researcher in scorpion functional morphology
Glad to have participate in such amazing project!
Javi, we have to repeat something similar very soon!
Finally, taking mito-nuclear discordance, hybridization patterns, morphology and species diatribution modelling we concluded that the most conservative hypothesis is that in Europe, only 9 species are sure to be valid.
26.10.2025 10:25 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
During climate shifts over millions of years, species expanded and contracted their ranges. Isolated populations evolved separately into new species, but when ranges overlapped again, they could still interbreed, creating hybrids with traits between both parents.
26.10.2025 10:25 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
We look more carefully and in few cases we found that some old species (e.g., B. pedrosousai and B. baeticus) were hybrid species.
26.10.2025 10:24 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Mithocondrial was kind of supporting a high number of clades while nuclear markers where reducing significantly the species within each cluster. Interestingly, some relationships between sister taxa were completely altered when comparing the two types of markers
26.10.2025 10:24 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
One of the main problem in Eyropean Buthus os their extreme morphological variability. When we analyzed mithocondrial and nuclear markers we found that these two parts of the genoma were telling different story. The so called mito-nuclear discordance.
26.10.2025 10:23 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Few Months ago, together with @jblascoarosteg we published a monography about European Buthus and we reduced the number of existing soecies from 20 to 9. In this new paper, all reasons for this choice are explained.
bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
With morphology, genetics & SDMs, we show that only 9 of the 20 described European Buthus species are valid! Descriptions based solely on morphology are prone to mistakes for these scorpions. Fantastic work led by Javi which I am honored to be part of it.
digitallibrary.amnh.org/items/c3e980...
This may suggest a trade off between grasping and holding with profound consequences of predatory strategies, diet and even venom evolution.
Thanks to @anthony-herrel.bsky.social and Arie van der Meinden for your supervision! It
If anyone needs a copy of the manuscript just drop me a message
Finally, we modelled the closing force per degree of rotation. Long-fingered species have a peak in closing force at the beginning of the closing event followed by a drop in force towards the end. The short-fingered species have their peak force toward the end of the closing
21.05.2025 12:34 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
This muscle in both species have parallel long fibers with short sarcomeres, i.e., fast muscle contraction! However, in the fast species this muscle is big and with a relatively long moment arm. Good for torque production! This suggests a dual function depending on the contraction necessities.
21.05.2025 12:33 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Another main difference between the two chelae is in the size of the patellar muscle. In the long-fingered species it is almost 50% of the volume of all closing muscles while in the short-fingered species the volume of this muscle is only 1.4% of the whole chela closing muscles, almost vestigial!!
21.05.2025 12:32 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
The super strong chela closing in short-fingered chelae is due to larger mechanical advantage (MA), long sarcomeres and stronger muscles with long moment arms. While the super fast closing in long-fingered chelae is due to low MA, short sarcomeres and stronger muscles with short moment arms
21.05.2025 12:21 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
My official baptism of Bluesky!
Hot off the press!
My last chapter of PhD has been finally published! Here we compare the internal anatomy of the chela closing muscles in two species of scorpions at the extremes of the chela morphological gradient.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
