Figure 94 in A review of the genus Leiurus Ehrenberg, 1828 (Scorpiones: Buthidae) with description of four new species from the Arabian Peninsula

Figure 94: Comparative analysis of granulation on tergite III of female Leiurus. A. UV fluorescence image of tergite III medial intercarinal surface of L. quinquestriatus (Egypt). B. Mask of granulation pattern on medial intercarinal surface from image in Figure 94A. C. Enlarged view of tergite III granulation in rectangular area indicated in Figure 94A. Granules were identified as local maxima of fluorescence intensity with contour shadows cast by directional UV illumination, and were modeled by elliptical regions-of-interest (ROIs). Parameters of granule ROIs were measured in ImageJ 1.44 (Rasband, 1997–2011). Area of granulometric analysis was restricted to surfaces bounded by the lateral and posterior marginal carinae, and a line passing through oblique, anterior transverse rows of enlarged granules (granules along carinae and bounding lines were omitted). D. Scatter plot of mean granule diameter vs. total granule area for 4 species of Leiurus (L. arabicus sp. n., L. haenggii sp. n., L. hebraeus stat. n. and L. quinquestriatus). Each point represents granulometric data derived from tergite III of one scorpion specimen (bilaterally, as shown in Figure 94B). Data were extracted from 18,423 ROIs from 36 scorpions. For each specimen, total granule area (a measure of density of granulation) was computed as sum of areas of all ROIs, and mean ROI diameter (a measure of coarseness of granulation) as the mean value of the maximum diameters of all granule ROIs. For comparative analysis, images from different size scorpions were resampled to equalize the distance between left and right posterior marginal granules of the lateral carinae (arbitrarily set to 4,000 units or pixels; linear dimensions expressed as [pixel], areas as [pixel2]). The total granule area separated the species into 2 groups: i.e. sparsely granulated (L. arabicus, L. haenggii) and densely granulated (L. hebraeus, L. quinquestriatus). In contrast, the distributions of ROI diameter were broadly overlapping. E. To obtain a more sensitive comparison of the coarseness of granulation, normalized cumulative distributions of single ROI areas for 3 species of Leiurus were computed (inset indicates number of scorpions analyzed). Relative horizontal positions of these curves indicated increasing coarseness of granulation, in rank order: L. haenggii