Inverebrate: Scorpions

Blog post 4

Hello again, welcome back evolution of venom. Today’s blog topic will be covering one of the invertebrates that use venom. A recap from last blog: a third theory about how venom evolve by gene duplication and which animal lineages evolved venom (exception of birds).

 

First off, what is an invertebrate? An invertebrate is considered to be an animal without a backbone with scorpions, spiders, insects like bees and wasps, cephalopods, molluscs, and jellyfish (Casewell, 2017).

 

Scorpions
Scorpions belong to the order Scorpionida that is a part of the arachnid’s family which is the same family that spiders come from (The Columbia encyclopedia, 2008). The body of the scorpion is comprised of the prosoma (head), a segmented opisthosoma (body), six appendages on the body, two pedipads (claws), a mesosoma (Tail) and a narrow sting at the end on the tail (The Columbia encyclopedia, 2017).

Venom from the gland is forced down and out of the tip of the stinger by the muscles around the gland (The Columbia encyclopedia, 2008). Scorpion venom affects human differently depending on the species of scorpions as symptoms can occur in five hours including nausea, sweating, and vomiting. As the venom affects the nervous system, more dangerous symptoms are respiratory problems, multi-system-organ failure and death (Petricevich, 2010).

 By Shantanu Kuveskar - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38768394

 

In next week’s blog, we be covering other invertebrates that use venom. Below are the articles used in this week’s blog if anyone wants to read more about scorpions.

 

References  

Casewell, N. 2017, "Evolution: Gene Co-option Underpins Venom Protein Evolution", CURRENT BIOLOGY, vol. 27, no. 13, pp. R647-R649.

 

Petricevich, V.L. 2010, "Scorpion Venom and the Inflammatory Response", Mediators of Inflammation, vol. 2010, pp. 1-16.

 

scorpion. (2017). In P. Lagasse & Columbia University, The Columbia encyclopedia. (7th ed.). [Online]. New York: Columbia University Press. Available from: https://elibrary.jcu.edu.au/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/topic/scorpion?institutionId=429 [Accessed 30 March 2018].

 

scorpion. (2008). In Philip's encyclopedia. [Online]. London: Philip's. Available from: https://elibrary.jcu.edu.au/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/philipency/scorpion/0?institutionId=429 [Accessed 30 March 2018].