About

Scorpions are an important part of Namibian biodiversity. Most species are only mildly venomous, with painful but localized stings, but there are also medically important species whose stings can be serious or even fatal.

The goal of this project is to produce a comprehensive identification guide to all known scorpion species from Namibia. A book like this will be of value to citizens, tourists, the hospitality industry, conservationists, researchers, medical practitioners and educators alike. At the same time, new species will likely be discovered and described, and the distributions of known species will be updated.

The most important part of a field guide is the photographs. All species need to be photographed, including both sexes, colour varieties, and their habitats. This involves finding these scorpions in the wild, often in remote and difficult to reach places, and hoping that conditions are suitable to find them when you get there. To save on travel costs a sophisticated algorithm has been used to select areas to visit using known distribution records from museum collections and iNaturalist (purple hexagons on the map), and satellite imagery from NASA will be used to plan visits after rainfall, when scorpions are active.

The book will be published by Struik Nature and is planned for early/mid 2028. It will be widely available in book stores, curio shops, airports, and other outlets in Namibia and South Africa, as well as available online. The format will follow that of Scorpions of South Africa, which has sold over 2000 copies since its release in 2023. The story of Scorpions of South Africa is available on YouTube.

Author Ian Engelbrecht is an expert on scorpions and mygalomorph spiders in southern Africa. He obtained a PhD in Zoology from the University of Pretoria, and has worked for several biodiversity and conservation organisations including the South African National Biodiversity Institute, provincial Nature Conservation in Gauteng Province, and the Agricultural Research Council. He is currently a research associate of the Department of Zoology and Entomology at the University of Pretoria. He has described several species new to science and has a spider species,Lepthercus engelbrechti, named after him.