Distribution of the Scorpion, 



Vaejovis carolinianus (Beauvois) — a Reevaluation, 



(Arachnida: Scorpionida: Vaejovidae) 



Rowland M. Shelley 



North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences, P. O. Box 29555, 



Raleigh, North Carolina 27626-0555 



ABSTRACT — Vaejovis carolinianus (Beauvois) is primarily an 

 upland scorpion ranging from the Ohio River in central Kentucky 

 to the inner Coastal Plain of Alabama and, east/west, from 

 the Fall Zone of South Carolina and Georgia to eastern Mississippi 

 and westcentral Tennessee. A disjunct population inhabits the 

 Tunica Hills, along the eastern side of the Mississippi River 

 in southwestern Mississippi and adjacent Louisiana. It is abundant 

 in the Cumberland Plateau of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama, 

 but occurs only in the western tip of Virginia. The distribution 

 skirts the western and southern peripheries of the Blue Ridge 

 Province, including only certain border counties of North Carolina, 

 primarily those adjoining Georgia and western South Carolina. 

 The northward extension west of the Appalachians is much 

 greater than that to the east, and sporadic records from the 

 interior of North Carolina and southern border counties east of 

 the Appalachians apparently constitute accidental human importations. 

 Specific localities are detailed and plotted on a distribution 

 map. 



The southern unstriped scorpion, Vaejovis carolinianus (Beauvois) 

 (Fig. 1), characterized by dusky brown pigmentation without stripes 

 and the absence of a subaculear tubercle on the telson, is the only 

 indigenous scorpion in the southeastern United States known to occur 

 north of Florida (Muma 1967, Shelley 1994). Rossman (1979) present- 

 ed a distribution map and summarized earlier records; Gibbons et al. 

 (1990) mapped the overall distribution and that in Alabama, and reported 

 that the scorpion occurs in scattered localities from central Kentucky, 

 eastern Tennessee, and western parts of Virginia and the Carolinas 

 through Georgia and Alabama, chiefly above the Coastal Plain. Gibbons 

 et al. mentioned that isolated records were available for eastern and 

 southwestern Mississippi, and the adjacent part of Louisiana, and that 

 the scorpion ranges south of the Fall Zone in Alabama as far as Dallas 

 County. However, the only specific locality reported in the latter areas 

 is Tunica Hills, along the eastern side of the Mississippi River in West 

 Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, and Wilkinson County, Mississippi, and 



Brimleyana 21:57-68, December 1994 57 



