La Faune Scorpionique Du Sahara Septentrional Algérien : Diversité Et Ecologie

Résumé: This work is a contribution to the knowledge of the scorpion fauna of the Algerian Septentrional Sahara (El-Oued, Ouargla and Ghardaïa).Through a three-year of survey (from November 2012 to December 2015), was allowed to collect a total of 1272 live scorpions classified into 12 species belonging to two families. 11 species belonging to Buthidae family: Androctonus amoreuxi, Androctonus australis, Androctonus aeneas, Buthus saharicus, Buthus tunetanus, Buthacus arenicola, Buthacus samiae, Buthacus spinatus, Buthiscus bicalcaratus, Lissothus chaambi et Orthochirus innesi.While the Scorpionidae family was represented only by Scorpio punicus. We have carried out a revision of Androctonus bicolor (old nomenclature of Koch, 1839) to Androctonus aeneas. In addition, we identified 4 new species, named: B. samiae, B. spinatus, B. saharicus and L. chaambi.Based on these discovered species, the Septentrional Algerian Sahara containing more than 36% of the reported species in Algeria and 0.6% of the world's scorpions. This study revealed that the palm grove was the richest biotope in scorpions, both in number (221 individual scorpions) and species (06 scorpion species),followed by Reg and Sebkha biotopes of the same region and Erg, Reg and Oued-bed of Ghardaïa region with 05 species. While the urban environment was characterized by only one species (A. australis).A. australis was the most abundant species in the studied regions: Ouargla and El-Oued with 80.82% and 70.79%, respectively.However, Ghardaïa is characterized by two dominant species: A. amoreuxi and A. australis (42%). The other species have very low abundances (less than 15%). Factorial analysis of correspondence was shown that the existence of an affinity between some species and their biotopes (characteristic species of habitats).However, the Jaccard similarity index applied to the different biotopes was shown that themost similar biotopes are Reg and Oued-bed (75%), as they are the area of 04 species. Furthermore,the palm grove and sebkha (57%) are relatively humid biotopes, allowing the installation of hygrophilous species (Orthochirus innesi and Scorpio punicus). The phenological study of some species showed that mating for populations of A. amoreuxi and A. australis is occurred in September and early October, with a favorable time to parturition in March. This behaviour remains discrete or not observable in the case of L. chaambi. Compared to the monograph of Vachon (1952), several species had an extension area such as: A. amoreuxi, A. australis and A. aeneas. However, the area of others species has been reduced such as B. bicalcaratus.

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