REVUESUISSE DE ZOOLOGIE110 (2): 355-379; juin 2003 New molecular and morphological data on the "Euscorpius carpathicus" speciescomplex (Scorpiones: Euscorpiidae) from Italy, Malta, and Greecejustify the elevation of E. c. sicanus (C. L. Koch, 1837) to the specieslevel Victor PETI, Benjamin GANTENBEIN2*, Michael E. SOLEGLAD3,Valerio VIGNOLI4. Nicola SALOMONE4,Elizabeth V. PETI & Patrick J. SCHEMBRI5 1Department of Biological Sciences,Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia 25755-2510,USA. E-mail:
[email protected] 2 Institute of Cell, Animal and PopulationBiology, Ashworth Laboratories,The Uni- versity of Edinburgh,Edinburgh EH9 3JT, Scotland. E-mail:
[email protected] 3 P.O.Box 250, Borrego Springs,California 92004,USA. E-mail:
[email protected] 4 Departmentof Evolutionary Biology, University of Siena,1- 53100 Siena,Italy. E-mail:
[email protected] 5 Departmentof Biology, University of Malta, Msida, MSD 06, Malta. E-mail:
[email protected] New molecular and morphological data on the "Euscorpius carpathi- cus" speciescomplex (Scorpiones: Euscorpiidae) from Italy, Malta, and Greecejustify the elevation of E. c. sicanus(C. L. Koch, 1837)to the specieslevel. The first mitochondrial DNA phylogeny (basedon 17 unique haplotypes) is presented for a number of scorpion populations from Italy, Malta, and Greece, previously classified under the "catch-all" name Euscorpius carpathicus (Linnaeus, 1767). A comparative analysis of the mitochondrial gene for 16S (large subunit) ribosomal RNA suggeststhat at least two clearly separatedlineages are present. However, neither of these belongs to E. carpathicus (L.) in a strict sense, which was limited to Romania in a recent morphological study. The first, "western" lineage, found in northern and central Italy (also present in southern France, Slovenia, Croatia, and Austria) correspondsto E.