Urodacus yaschenkoi

The above images show preferred habitat of Urodacus yaschenkoi.
Each yellow dot in the top pic indicates a burrow, showing clearly the incredible burrow density of this well established scorpion. This burrow density increases enormously when the new generations leave mum and venture out to dig their own burrow. They tend to disperse only within a few metres of mum, and so you see large aggregations, most of which are very early juveniles. As time goes by with further dispersion of subadults at the molt stage these family aggregations begin to break down and a mix of ages is seen, as in the above pic.
Urodacus yaschenkoi is most commonly associated with Triodia (spikey grass clumps) and mallee gum trees.
The photos show an 'island' habitat situation. The area of this vegetation and soil type in the photo is roughly 200m x 200m in area, outside of which the vegetation and soil changes. Urodacus yaschenkoi rapidly thins out at the boundary to become non-existant in the different habitat surrounding the 'island'. The most likely explanation for this thinning out at the boundary will be the physical properties of the soil in the surrounding area. The soil becomes more silt like, and hence a lot finer in particle size. This poses a problem to Urodacus yaschenkoi who relies on osmosis for water uptake. Water uptake from this soil type would require a greater pull from the body fluids, which apparently it cannot achieve.