Eremobates gladiolus - Eremobates

Only one species of what?

BC Ministry of the Environment et al. says: "We know hardly anything about the six species [of Solpugida] that are known from the south Okanagan -- in fact, three of these species have been discovered only recently and have not yet received official, scientific names!" http://wlapwww.gov.bc.ca/wld/documents/invertebrates.pdf

Are the other two (or five) species in different families of the order?

… John F. Carr, 15 February, 2009 - 5:52am

I don't much about windscorpions

in particular but i know this: entomologists are too quick to split species when in fact no splitting is warranted. Regarding the BC windscorpions how can they say there are 6 species living in south Okanagan since they also mention that don't know much about them?? Statements such as the one you mentioned should be reserved for well-known, well-researched species. Passing judgements on scant data is not professional, to say at least. A combination of hybridization index, molecular markers (more than one and if possible nuclear, not mtDNA) and morphological features are what people should use to determine whether they deal with one or more species. In the case of specialists they should also study habitat preference.

… Marius Virgiliu Aurelian, 15 February, 2009 - 10:21am

Still three possibilities

We might ignore the unnamed species pending a formal description.

I'm still not sure what to make of the remaining three species. A 2004 paper synonymized E. gladiolus with E. scaber ("The systematics of the Eremobates scaber species-group (Solifugae, Eremobatidae"), Jack O. Brookhart and Paula E. Cushing, Journal of Arachnology). If we accept that snyonymy here there are fewer species in BC -- but the name of this one would be E. scaber.

A checklist of species lists for BC:

Eremobates docolora Brookhart & Muma 1981 ("Biome: Cold Dry Grassland")

Eremobates scaber (also cold dry grassland)

Hemerotrecha denticulata Muma 1951 ("Mojave Desert; Great Basin Desert; Cold Dry Grassland.")

From "An annotated checklist of continental North American Solifugae with type depositories, abundance, and notes on their zoogeography", Jack O. Brookhart and Irene P. Brookhart, Journal of Arachnology 2006. The authors mention one undescribed species from Canada.

… John F. Carr, 15 February, 2009 - 10:41am

Whatever it is...

Whatever it is, this sure is a great image of it! I, too, would suspect more species up there. They are not uncommon in eastern Oregon, I know that much.

… Eric R. Eaton, 15 February, 2009 - 3:35pm

This weird bug thing

They are also very common in ceres ca i have found 4 of them that we caught they are a lil agressive. We have also found them in Santa nella ca but the ones down here have super huge pinchers on their faces.

… pheachez, 26 July, 2009 - 5:39pm