Is “Tityus” tenuimanus Banks, 1910 actually a member of the genus Leiurus?

 

There are quite a few taxa in the scorpion world with unclear or unsolved status. “Tityus” tenuimanus Banks, 1910 (Buthidae) is one of these. Originally, labelled as collected in California, USA, but later this was changed to Morocco, and the species was synonymized with Buthus atlantis Pocock, 1889.

Mohamed Mousaid and co-workers have recently published a redescription of this taxa after examining the holotype. Their conclusion is that this species probably belongs to the genus Leiurus Ehrenberg,
1828. The absence of adult specimens makes it impossible to further conclude abut the status.

The authors remove “Tityus” tenuimanus from synonymy with B. atlantis, and consider it nomen dubium.

Abstract:
This study re-examines the holotype of “Tityus” tenuimanus Banks, 1910, previously synonymized with Buthus atlantis Pocock, 1889 by Lourenço & Francke (1984). Our results indicate that the specimen is a misidentified representative of Leiurus Ehrenberg, 1828, as it exhibits the diagnostic characters of this genus: the central lateral and posterior median carinae of the carapace fused into a lyre-shaped configuration, and tergites I–II bearing five granular carinae (a character absent in the genus Buthus Leach, 1815). Moreover, the holotype lacks one of the most distinctive characters of the genus Tityus Koch, 1836, namely the presence of a subaculear tubercle. The holotype shares several morphological features with two species described from Egypt (especially trichobothrial configuration on the fixed finger of pedipalp), Leiurus libycus (Birula, 1908) and L. aegyptiacus Lourenço & El- Hennawy, 2021, both of which are only known from immature material. The absence of adult specimens for these two species, as well as the lack of a clear assessment of their intraspecific morphological variation, leads us to consider “T.” tenuimanus as a
nomen dubium for the time being, and to remove it from synonymy with B. atlantis.

Reference:
Mousaid M, Yagmur EA, Flores Z, Rivera A, Lansari A, Bouazza A. A reassessment of “Tityus” tenuimanus Banks, 1910, as a misidentified Leiurus sp. (Scorpiones: Buthidae). Euscorpius. 2026(431):1–7. [Open Access]

Family Buthidae