What happens when a hymenopterist finds a mysterious arachnid in a Danish hothouse? Sean Birk Bek Craig was exploring the floor of a hothouse, also known as a greenhouse, when he came upon an interesting creature. “I could see that it was an arachnid when I looked up close,” he said, “but immediately just looking at it with my eyes… I was really perplexed about what the devil that was!” Short-tailed whip-scorpions, or members of the order Schizomida, are tiny arachnids who aren’t typically in Denmark, but with a lot of research, Sean concluded it had probably been accidentally imported on one of the tropical plants, possibly from Thailand. With a few ups and downs, Sean described it as his very first new species, and gave it a specific epithet of “serendipitus” after the unexpected way it came into his life.
Sean’s paper “First records of the order Schizomida from tropical hothouses in Denmark: Stenochrus portoricensis and a new species of Bamazomus (Schizomida: Hubbardiidae)” is in issue 67 of Arachnology Letters.
A transcript of this episode can be found here: Sean Birk Bek Craig - Transcript
New Species: Bamazomus serendipitus
Episode image credit: Sean Birk Bek Craig
Find Sean on X/Twitter: @BekBirk
Read the paper describing Materia boggildi: https://bioone.org/journals/arachnology/volume-19/issue-6/arac.2023.19.6.888/A-new-Masteria-Araneae--Dipluridae-from-tropical-hothouses-in/10.13156/arac.2023.19.6.888.short
Read the paper that nearly made Sean’s new species a synonym:
https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/121754/
Read the paper describing a new Schizomid genus from Germany:
https://arages.de/10.5431/aramit4906
Read Abrams’ paper “Too Hot to Handle”: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1055790319301824
Enjoy the World Schizomida Catalog: https://wac.nmbe.ch/order/schizomida/5
Read Matty’s thesis on biologists: https://research.ku.dk/search/result/?pure=en/publications/for-the-love-of-the-living(049e101d-c89d-472f-ba7a-f7a62e8337a4).html
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