Abstract

The Buthidae family is a widespread family of scorpions distributed worldwide. Most of the lethal scorpions belong to this family, which comprises Androctonus, Leiurus, and Buthacus scorpion genera. Although morphological characteristics have various unclear phylogenetic relationships and characteristic polarity assumptions among these scorpion species, the molecular markers method is preferred by many researchers to determine genetic relationships between family members due to the variability of geographic areas and environmental factors associated with different habitats. The DNA barcoding system has been used in species comparison by sequencing conserved DNA standard loci sequences. This phylogeny study covered scorpion species from the following countries: Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, and Iran to have more information on molecular identification between Androctonus species (Androctonus crassicauda, Androctonus bicolor, and Androctonus amoreuxi), Buthus species (Buthacus arenicola), and Leiurus species (Leiurus quinquestriatus) using cytochrome C oxidase subunit 1 (CO1) and NADH dehydrogenase 1 (ND1). Our results indicate that CO1 as a mitochondrial marker is a more informative molecular marker and reflects partial but not identical evolutionary patterns with ND1 that yielded inconsistent phylogenetic groupings, exhibiting fast evolutionary rates, and moderate-to-severe substitution saturation; the concatenated sequences provided higher resolution and support values, which demonstrates the worth of multigene investigations in scorpion systematics.

Key words: Cytochrome oxidase subunit I (CO1), NADH dehydrogenase 1 (ND1), Phylogeny, Mitochondrial DNA, Scorpions; Buthidae.