Research

Research Interests  

My interests lie in various aspects of evolution, genetics, biogeography and taxonomy of scorpions – which demonstrate remarkable adaptations and diversity acquired in their 400,000,000 years of known evolutionary history.

My research involves reconstructing scorpion evolution and phylogeny with molecular techniques, particularly mitochondrial DNA PCR and sequence analysis – the same methods as are used in forensic science, DNA fingerprinting/barcoding, and genetic engineering. I am also interested in taxonomy, systematics, paleontology, morphology, and various phenomena specific to scorpions, including in particular their sensory organs. I also collaborate on projects in molecular evolution of other animals.

I am actively involved in systematics, faunistics, and taxonomy of scorpions, and published widely on this subject. With my co-authors, I published the Catalog of the Scorpions of the World (1758-1998) (2000), a “yellow pages” book listing about 1300 species and 170 genera of the existing scorpions, plus about 100 fossil species.

Another aspect of my research concerns evolution, biodiversity, and biogeography of desert and mountain animals and biotas, especially in Central Asia and the Balkans. I work with local collectives of biologists as an editor on production of definitive monographs in biodiversity and biogeography. Two of such monographic works have been published, Biogeography and Ecology of Turkmenistan (1994) and Biogeography and Ecology of Bulgaria (2007).

I have traveled intensively with research purposes, both for field work and museum work. In 2001-2002, the National Geographic Society sponsored my expedition to Central Asian deserts to study scorpions there. My overseas field travels over many years took me to Mexico, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Austria, France, Russia, Slovenia, and New Zealand; I worked with scorpion collections in the natural history museums of the USA, England, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, and Bulgaria, and studied collections loaned from dozens of other museums. I run a number of cooperative projects with researchers from many countries. In 2005, I was on a sabbatical leave as a Fulbright Scholar Program grant recipient in Bulgaria; and in 2012, on a sabbatical leave as a Fulbright Scholar Program grant recipient in Greece.

I am also the editor (together with Michael E. Soleglad) of“Euscorpius“, the Occasional Publications in Scorpiology, an online peer-reviewed research journal and the only research periodical completely devoted to scorpions, mainly to their systematics.
NOTE THAT ‘Euscorpius’ is now fully migrated to Marshall Digital Scholar:
“Euscorpius”

Since its inception in 2001, “Euscorpius” published 272 issues authored by 159 zoologists from 34 countries (USA, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, China, Colombia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, The Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Somaliland, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, and Venezuela.)

In 2002-2019, 249 new species and 17 new genera of scorpions ​from 63 countries (Afghanistan, Australia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, the British Virgin Islands, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Greece, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lithuania (amber), Madagascar, Malaysia, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Somaliland, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, USA, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Western Sahara, and Yemen) have been described in “Euscorpius”.

My additional interests within biological sciences concern history of biology, especially in my native Russia.  I translated into English a seminal and nearly forgotten Russian work on symbiogenesis by Boris M. Kozo-Polyansky (1924). The book was published in May 2010 by Harvard University Press. This work was co-edited, encouraged and promoted by Professor Lynn Margulis (1938-2011), the leading authority on symbiogenesis and the original author of the serial endosymbiotic theory (SET) of eukaryotic cell origin. On 24 September 2010, Professor Margulis came to Marshall University to celebrate publication of this important book.