Arachnologische Mitteilungen 54

Arachnologische Mitteilungen / Arachnology Letters 54: 44-47 Karlsruhe, September 2017 The Emperor Scorpion is one of the world’s most famous scor- pions mainly due to its large size. Its impressive size, together with the large chelate pedipalps, harmless sting and its easy breeding in captivity, led this species to become a popular pet for arachnid keepers.Therefore, the ever increasing demand of this species for breeding has led to it being added to the list of animals protected by the Washington Convention (Lourenço & Cloudsley-Thompson 1996, Rossi 2015b, 2015d). In the wild, the species is distributed in the moist and wet tropical forests of West and Central Africa, approximate- ly from Liberia to Cameroon (Prendini 2004, Rossi 2015b). However, its precise distribution has by no means yet been conclusively determined. The type specimen of Pandinus imperator was considered lost (Moritz & Fischer 1980, Lourenço 2014). During the di- gitalization of the collections at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, a drawer labelled “Holotypus: Buthus imperator KOCH 1842” containing several scorpions turned up. One of these scorpion specimens bore great resemblance to Koch’s description (Koch 1841) and coloured drawing (Figs 1-2). Material and methods The type specimen is inventoried at the SMNS as SMNS- Scor-002031. Measurements are callipered according to the plate (Fig. 3). Morphological terminology mainly follows Hjelle (1990).The classifications of family, subfamily and tri- be follow Rossi (2016). High quality images of type speci- men details are available at http://ent.smns-bw.org/drawer/ Entomologie-drawers_Arachnida.htm . Abbreviation: SMNS = Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde, Stuttgart, Germany. Results Having considered all the available evidence, we conclude that the specimen in question is the holotype of Pandinus im- perator . It agrees well with both the original description and the original illustration (colour, total length, 16 pectinal teeth, etc., see Figs. 2-4) (Koch 1841). The colour of the specimen agrees with the hand-coloured figure on Koch’s plate and ran- ges from brown to ochre. In our opinion, this could be due to bleaching. Koch described the specimen from the Erlangen University collection, where it had possibly been presented in an earlier exhibition. Unfortunately, no locality is indicated on the label nor in the original description. In the original description, the length is given in units, possibly lignes or Pariser Linien ’’’ (Paris lines = 1/12 pouce) and French Zoll ’’ (inches or pouce) that were in use in various sciences after the 18 th century: 1 Linie (line) = 2.2558 mm and 1 Zoll (pouce) = 2.7069949 cm. The Emperor is back! Rediscovery and redescription of the holotype of Pandinus imperator (Scorpiones: Scorpionidae) Joachim Holstein, IngoWendt & Andrea Rossi doi: 10.5431/aramit5410 Abstract. The holotype of the Emperor Scorpion Pandinus imperator (C.L. Koch, 1841) was long believed to have been lost. In 2015, as sci- entists at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart were digitizing its entomological collections, they rediscovered the specimen on which Koch had based his description of the scorpion in 1841. Keywords: Buthus imperator , Emperor Scorpion, lost type, State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart Zusammenfassung. Der Kaiser ist zurück! Entdeckung und Wiederbeschreibung des Holotyps von Pandinus imperator (Scorpi- ones: Scorpionidae). Der Holotypus des Kaiserskorpions Pandinus imperator (C.L. Koch, 1841) galt lange Zeit als verschollen. Im Zuge der Sammlungsdigitalisierung am Staatlichen Museum für Naturkunde in Stuttgart wurde das Exemplar 2015 wiederentdeckt, das Koch für seine Beschreibung 1841 zur Verfügung stand. Joachim Holstein, Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart, Rosenstein 1, D-70191 Stuttgart, Germany; E-mail: joachim.holstein@smns-bw.de Ingo Wendt, Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart, Rosenstein 1, D-70191 Stuttgart, Germany; E-mail: ingo.wendt@smns-bw.de Andrea Rossi, Museo di Storia Naturale dell’Università degli Studi di Firenze, Sezione di Zoologia“La Specola”, Dipartimento di Entomologia, via Romana 17, I-50125, Firenze, Italia; E-mail: andrea.rossi@arachnida.eu submitted 8.3.2017, accepted 3.8.2017, online 16.8.2017 Fig. 1 : Pandinus imperator , hand-coloured plate of the holotype specimen from Koch (1841: Plate 289) Fig. 2 : Pandinus imperator , photograph of the holotype (SMNS- Scor-002031) and the label attached