Maintaining Sand Scorpions in the laboratory

 

Douglas Gaffin is a very experienced scorpion researcher who has studied sense organs and sense physiology in scorpions for more than three decades. His main study animals have been the American Sand Scorpions Smeringurus mesaensis (Stahnke, 1957) and Paruroctonus utahensis (Williams, 1968) (Vaejovidae).

Douglas has now published an article where he shares his extensive experiences with keeping Paruroctonus utahensis in the laboratory. This will be very helpful for others who wants to keep this species under optimal conditions for research or hobby.

Abstract:
For over three decades, I have collected and maintained sand scorpions in my research laboratory. I have learned that these animals are not only easy to collect but also accepting of laboratory conditions. In this note, I followed a population of 34 sand scorpions collected from a sand field near Monahans, Texas, and housed under stable conditions in jars in my lab at the University of Oklahoma. I kept track of their feeding and watering schedules and noted their date of death. In the end, I generated a descriptive post-collection survivorship curve for this population. I hope that this account can help guide those interested in working with these exquisite animals and provide a baseline for comparing with other populations of collected animals held under laboratory conditions.

Reference:
Gaffin D. Lessons from Three Decades of Maintaining Sand Scorpions in the Laboratory: Husbandry and Survivorship of Paruroctonus utahensis. Arthropoda. 2026;4(3):15. [Open Access]

Thanks to Matt Simon for informing me about this article!