[HOW TO] Terms And Biology

Hey Guys and Girls

This is kinda meant for people that aren't used to a lot of the terms and some biology terms that are thrown around here so I will try to explain a bit, this might help you out when you need to ask something.

Well, let's start with the sexing codes. Instead of writing Male, Female, or not sexed, some clever person have come up with a set of numbers that will explain it more easily. Let's use an example.

1.3.5 B. jacksoni

What this code means is 1 male, 3 females and 5 not sexed
The first number in the code will always be the males
The second number in the code is always females
And last the third number is always non sexed


Well, let's take some biology
Some people in here will use terms like "Metasoma", "Chela" and "Mesosoma". These are terms for different parts / areas of the scorpion, like we say Index finger and stuff like that, this is very useful when it comes to telling other people where to look on a scorpion. I know these terms can be hard to remember, so here is a thread with reference photos:

Clicky

This may save you from saying something like "Look at the end of the tail that ball thingie with the stinger on it, its broken!" which can now sound more like "look at the telson, the aculeus is broken." Now a lot of people will know where on the scorpion you're talking about and save you time to explain more.

While we are at it, let's do names

Most of us know that a Emperor scorpion is a Pandinus imperator, but sometimes people go into a pet store and buy something called "Red bark scorpion" or "African burrowing scorpion." The problem with these names is that they aren't the "real" names of the scorpion -- it doesn't tell us what species the scorpion is, which is a very important thing to know, both for breeding and for keeping the scorpion correctly.
Some pet stores might label a Heterometrus longimanus and a Pandinus imperator the same name, "Emperor scorpion." In this case the caring for these two is the same (they are both rain forests species and can be kept the same way), but when it comes to breeding you'll run into trouble. That's why it's generally better to only use the scientific name of the scorpion.

Now it gets a bit technical. Scorpion scientific names go Genus species subspecies (there's more to it than that, but this is the most important part).

Example:

Pandinus is the genus of the scorpion, imperator is the species. Subspecies would come next, but you don't see that with all scorpions. (An example would be Hadrurus arizonensis pallidus, where Hadrurus is the genus, arizonensis is the species, and pallidus is the subspecies.)

There are also some terms like sp. ssp. spp. and sub. These you may see around here; they explain a lot without typing in long sentences.

sp.
When you only know the genus of the scorpion but don't know the species, like Pandinus sp.

spp.
When you want to refer to all species of the genus. For example, Pandinus spp. refers to all scorpions in genus Pandinus.

ssp.
When you know the genus and species, but not the subspecies. For example, Uroctonus mordax ssp..

Well, I hope I didnt miss anything that whould have been helpful; I hope you can use this infomation I have put together for you.

Got a email from Mark saying we can use his pictures of scorpion biologi if we want... so dont worry about copyrights and stuff