Scorpions, Whip Scorpions And Wind Scorpions Of Florida

Entomologists of the Division of Plant Industry, Florida Department of Agriculture, provide an identification service for the State of Florida of insects, mites, spiders, scorpions, millipedes, centipedes and other arthropods. Fairly frequently, scorpions and other arachnids closely related to scorpions are received for identification and information is requested concerning the virulence of their stings or bites, their recognition characters, their habits and their control. The accurate identification of these groups in Florida has been confused due to the inadequacy of identification keys, the occurrence of highly questionable records for Florida which have appeared in the literature, and the lack of detailed descriptions of those species which are known to occur in Florida; at least two Florida species have been undescribed. Dr. Martin H. Muma, Research Associate of The Florida State Collection of Arthropods and Technical Advisor to the Florida Department of Agriculture, was asked to prepare a bulletin stressing the recognition and distribution of the species found in the state.

Scorpions, whip scorpions and wind scorpions are predaceous on other small animals, mostly upon soft-bodied insects, but as the author indicates in this bulletin, only the scorpions possess poison glands and constitute any danger to man. None of the several species of scorpions which occur in Florida is capable of inflicting a lethal sting, although the site of the sting may be painful for several hours. Scorpion venom, a neurotoxin, is comparable in toxicity and in its mode of action to that of the cobra, but the dose injected by the scorpion usually is insufficient to prove fatal to the human adult. The potency of the venom varies considerably from one species to another, and even closely related species may differ widely in this respect. In North America, species highly dangerous to humans, especially to children, occur only in arid regions of the extreme southwestern United States and Mexico.

Scorpions, Whip Scorpions and Wind Scorpions of Florida is the fourth of an irregularly appearing series of publications relating to the insects and other arthropods of Florida and neighboring land areas-the southeastern United States, the Bahama Islands, the Greater and Lesser Antilles, and the land areas in an around the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea-with emphasis on taxonomy, ecology, biology, and zoogeography.

The files and preserved specimens of the Florida State Collection of Arthropods provided a basis for many of the records in this publication. This collection is being developed by the staff members of the Entomology Section, Division of Plant Industry, Florida Department of Agriculture, and more than fifty Research Associates of the state arthropod collection. Close support is provided by staff members in several departments of the University of Florida, including those in the Department of Entomology, the Department of Biological Sciences, the Department of Zoology and the Florida State Museum. The collection is housed in the entomology building of the new Division of Plant Industry headquarters located on the campus of the University of Florida.

The author, Dr. Muma, was born in Topeka, Kansas, July 24, 1916. He received his B. S. degree from Frostburg State Teachers College in 1939, his M. S. degree from Western Maryland College in 1940, and his Ph. D. degree from the University of Maryland in 1943. From 1940 into 1945 he served as an Instructor and Assistant Entomologist at the University of Maryland, then as an Extension Entomologist and Associate Professor and Entomologist at the University of Nebraska from 1945 into 1951. Since 1951 he has been an Associate Professor, and then a full Professor of Entomology at the University of Florida Citrus Experiment Station located at Lake Alfred, working primarily on research relating to the biological control of citrus insects and mites. In the field of taxonomy he has made important contributions on the taxonomy and biology of citrus mites, and he is one of the foremost North American authorities on the taxonomy, biology and behavior of Arachnida, including spiders, scorpions and wind scorpions. He is the author or coauthor of forty articles in the field of entomology and forty-five articles in the field of arachnology, in addition to 21 extension bulletins concerning insects and other arthropods and six articles on speleology.