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2009: 2008: 2007: 2006: 2005: 2004: 2002: | U.S.A. (Arizona, Utah) 2007 6–16 August, 2007: Funded by the REVSYS grant. The goal of the trip, undertaken by co-PI W. David Sissom and volunteers Tom Anton and Gary Casper, was to accumulate additional samples of vaejovids for DNA sequencing and to expand the known geographical distributions of several taxa. Sissom left from Amarillo, Texas, around noon and collected Anton and Casper at the airport in Albuquerque, NM. By early evening, moderate to heavy rainfall in northwestern New Mexico eliminated the possibility of collecting that night. After staying at a hotel in Farmington, NM, the team pushed on to Moab, UT, to collect. Two days and nights in the desert habitats at Dead Horse State Park and vicinity yieldedParuroctonus boreus, P. utahensis, Vaejovis confusus, andSerradigitus wupatkiensis. One of the highlights was the finding of a female S. wupatkiensis carrying first instar offspring. After leaving southern Utah, the team headed toward the Flagstaff area in AZ. At various locations in the vicinity of Flagstaff, they found essentially the same species as at Moab, with the addition of an iurid scorpion, Hadrurus spadix. A daytime search for topotypes of V. lapidicola and a potential new species in the vorhiesi group were unsuccessful. The third leg of the trip took the team to the Black Mountains along the western edge of north-central Arizona. On the first night, they collected in the northern part of the range along Highway 68. After an inauspicious start, they collected specimens of Vaejovis confusus, V. spinigerus, V. hirsuticauda, Serradigitus joshuaensis, S. subtilimanus, and an iurid Hadrurus arizonensis. The second night, in the southern part of the range in the vicinity of Sitgreaves Pass, the team collected most of the species at the preceding location, but also found H. spadix. On route back to Kingman, they stopped in the desert flats and found several H. arizonensis and V. confusus. The final destination for collecting was Canyon de Chelly National Monument. Despite sampling for two consective nights, surface activity and abundance were low. Collecting along the rock walls of the White House trail yielded only Serradigitus wupatkiensis. The second night’s collecting in sandy habitats on the south rim produced only Paruroctonus utahensis. After dropping Gary and Tom off in Albuquerque, an unsuccessful attempt was made to secure specimens of Paruroctonus pecos at the New Mexico/Texas state line, where the species had previously been found. | |
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