Lessons from Three Decades of Maintaining Sand Scorpions in the Laboratory: Husbandry and Survivorship of Paruroctonus utahensis

Abstract

For over three decades, I have collected and maintained sand scorpions in my research laboratory. I have learned that these animals are not only easy to collect but also accepting of laboratory conditions. In this note, I followed a population of 34 sand scorpions collected from a sand field near Monahans, Texas, and housed under stable conditions in jars in my lab at the University of Oklahoma. I kept track of their feeding and watering schedules and noted their date of death. In the end, I generated a descriptive post-collection survivorship curve for this population. I hope that this account can help guide those interested in working with these exquisite animals and provide a baseline for comparing with other populations of collected animals held under laboratory conditions.