![\"\"](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Mesobuthus_martensii_-_National_Museum_of_Nature_and_Science,_Tokyo_-_DSC07145.JPG\")
<\/a>Mesobuthus martensii<\/p><\/div>\n
The Chinese scorpion,\u00a0Mesobuthus martensii<\/i>, is a species of medical interest, not just because it has a stinger and can inflict injury on others, but because the chemicals of its\u00a0sting are\u00a0being explored\u00a0for our\u00a0use in medicine. Peptides produced in the stinger have been used as antimicrobial agents, have been shown to reduce convulsions\u00a0in epileptic rats and cancerous tumours in human cell cultures. However, because of its newfound value to medicine (and a long-standing role in Chinese traditional medicine), wild populations of the Chinese scorpion are declining across their native range (from Mongolia to North Korea and Japan), and the species is now considered vulnerable by Chinese conservation biologists. Needless to say, this is one scorpion species whose natural history would be good to understand, and yet one we know very little about.<\/p>\n
Working from a brief and poorly recorded observation of fly larvae hanging around a dead scorpion, a team of researchers lead by Cheng-Min Shi set out to understand the natural enemies and parasitoids of the Chinese scorpion and started by\u00a0combing Niushou Mountain for scorpions, collecting a few hundred scorpions in the process. They then brought the live scorpions back\u00a0to the lab and waited and watched to see what would happen. What they found however, raised many more questions: questions that extend far beyond the mountains of Northeastern China.<\/p>\n
Of the 317 specimens they brought back to the lab, 73 died within the first nine days, the majority of which soon spawned dozens of wriggling, late-instar maggots. After rearing many of these maggots to adulthood, and sequencing the DNA of both adults and larvae, the researchers were able to put a name on the first recorded parasitoid for this important scorpion species:\u00a0Sarcophaga\u00a0<\/em>(Liosarcophaga<\/em>) dux<\/i>, a species of flesh fly in the family Sarcophagidae. Parasitoid flesh flies aren’t that unusual;\u00a0flesh flies have been recorded in a wide variety of hosts, from grasshoppers and millipedes to crabs, and even frogs. And flies parasitizing scorpions isn’t even that unique; there are tachinid flies that are known parasitoids of other scorpion species. But what is<\/em> unusual is that\u00a0we\u00a0had already found the larvae of Sarcophaga dux<\/em> before, and they didn’t come out of\u00a0a scorpion.<\/p>\n It turns out that\u00a0Sarcophaga dux<\/em> is actually a relatively common species of flesh fly, known from across Asia and Europe, with a range stretching all the way from Japan\u00a0to France. The species has even managed to spread\u00a0throughout the South Pacific, reaching as far away as Australia and Hawaii. Until now we had thought it to have been closely\u00a0associated with humans, following us around the world and feeding upon our waste, among other things:\u00a0an adult fly was once captured on a dead body in Switzerland and studied for forensic purposes, while a few maggots\u00a0were removed from\u00a0the ear of a newborn baby\u00a0in Thailand, which, it bears pointing out, is definitely not the same thing as a scorpion. So now we have a species that in some places is a parasitoid, in other places a saprophage (feeding on microbes and fecal matter), but\u00a0also a\u00a0sarcophage when the opportunity arises\u00a0(feeding on dead stuff that it didn’t kill itself). Oh, and it can cause myiasis and survive by eating living tissue, like in that baby’s ear, or in cattle. It’s not uncommon to see a range of species in a genus exhibit each of these different life styles, or even for species to\u00a0evolve from one life style to another as they shift from generalists to specialists\u00a0(or vice versa). The Sarcophagidae in particular have evolved parasitic and parasitoidism many times independently,\u00a0but an all-in-one package like this? That’s unheard of.<\/p>\n How can a species display a life history that\u00a0ranges from the incredibly\u00a0specialized role of scorpion parasitoid to a jack-of-all-trades at\u00a0home in the big, bright\u00a0world\u00a0of garbage, dead bodies, and ear canals? By all accounts a\u00a0parasitoid without its host should die, and\u00a0a generalist omnivore should not be able to outsmart the immune system of a scorpion. Welcome to\u00a0the mystery of the unexplainable life history.<\/p>\n Can you tell which Sarcophaga dux<\/em> specimen comes from where based on the male genitalia? Left, from Thailand (assumably collected with carrion bait)(Sukontason et al., 2014); Centre, from Thailand, aural myiasis in child (Chaiwong et al., 2014); Right, from China, reared from scorpion (Shi et al., 2015). Click to enlarge and take a closer look.<\/p><\/div>\n Clearly something is going on here, and it’s going to take some very careful sleuthing\u00a0to figure out\u00a0what\u00a0Sarcophaga dux<\/em> really is.\u00a0By looking\u00a0at the genitalia of male flies, the tool that cracks the case for most fly taxonomists, you’d be hard pressed to tell which\u00a0specimens had been raised inside a scorpion and which came from\u00a0free-ranging maggots. But when Shi and colleagues looked closer at the DNA, they found that the flies they reared from scorpions differed from the rest of the\u00a0Sarcophaga dux<\/em> specimens by a consistent 1.25%. And while a genetic difference of 1.25% may seem insignificant, it represents the first clue\u00a0that\u00a0Sarcophaga dux<\/em>\u00a0may be more than just a single\u00a0species with a\u00a0confoundingly diverse life history.<\/p>\n And\u00a0that’s the best thing about studying natural history and taxonomy. Unlike a mystery novel that’s wrapped up with a nice, pretty bow by the final page, when we begin unravelling one taxonomic mystery, we invariably\u00a0stumble upon a new wave\u00a0of unknowns just waiting for our curiosity to be piqued.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Main paper:<\/p>\n Shi, C.-M., Zhang, X.-S. & Zhang, D.-X. (2015) Parasitoidism of the Sarcophaga dux (Diptera: Sarcophagidae) on the Mesobuthus martensii (Scorpiones: Buthidae) and Its Implications. Annals of the Entomological Society of America<\/i>.\u00a0http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1093\/aesa\/sav090<\/a><\/p>\n Supplementary papers:<\/p>\n Chaiwong, T., Tem-Eiam, N., Limpavithayakul, M., Boongunha, N., Poolphol, W. & Sukontason, K.L. (2014) Aural myiasis caused by Parasarcophaga (Liosarcophaga) dux (Thomson) in Thailand. Tropical biomedicine<\/i> 31, 496\u20138.<\/p>\n Sukontason, K.L., Sanit, S., Klong-Klaew, T., Tomberlin, J.K. & Sukontason, K. (2014) Sarcophaga (Liosarcophaga) dux (Diptera: Sarcophagidae): A flesh fly species of medical importance. Biological research<\/i> 47, 14.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What makes a good mystery? Well, usually a death is involved, there’s an unexpected plot twist along the way, and undoubtedly a shadowy figure no one expects ends up playing a central role. Toss in a few scorpions, a handful of maggots, and a dead body and you’re well on your way to a New […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,130,13],"tags":[606,583,598,581,431,582,597],"class_list":["post-3309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biology","category-cool-science","category-diptera","tag-biology","tag-cool-science","tag-diptera","tag-parasitoidism","tag-sarcophagidae","tag-scorpion","tag-taxonomy","category-75-id","category-130-id","category-13-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3309"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3322,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3309\/revisions\/3322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>