Life-history traits of the Brazilian litter-dwelling scorpion: post-embryonic development and reproductive behaviour in Ananteris mauryi Lourenço, 1982 (Scorpiones: Buthidae)

ABSTRACT

Life-history traits such as post-embryonic development and reproductive strategies have evolved in many ways to enable species to achieve success in their habitats. We herein describe the post-embryonic development and reproductive strategies (courtship, mating, gestation period and litter size) of the litter-dwelling scorpion Ananteris mauryi. Individuals reached adulthood in 6 months after four moults. A female that performed an extra moult reached adulthood in 9 months. The A. mauryi couples exhibited a typical scorpion reproductive behaviour with courtship ranging between 4 and 32 minutes. Following courtship, females generated 9–31 juveniles after 133 ± 11.7 days (mean ± standard deviation) of gestation. Because of its short developmental period and large litter size, A. mauryi can be considered an r-strategist species. These findings highlight the life-history traits of A. mauryi that may explain this species’ high resilience to changes in environmental conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• courtship
• instar duration
• litter size
• mating
• sexual size dimorphism

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the military command of the CIMNC for permission to use the area for our study and to Divisão de Transportes da Universidade Federal de Pernambuco for all technical support. We are also grateful to the anonymous referees for their valuable comments on previous versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

We are grateful to Fundação de Amparo à Ciência e Tecnologia do Estado de Pernambuco (FACEPE) for the postdoctoral scholarship [BFP-0010-2.05/19] to AFA Lira; and to Fundação de Apoio à Pesquisa do Estado da Paraíba (FAPESQ) for granting a doctoral scholarship (519/18) to W. Dionisio-da-Silva.