Inter-individual variability in equine antibody responses to African snake venoms follows heavy-tailed distributions with implications for antivenom production

  Inter-individual variability in equine antibody responses to African snake venoms follows heavy-tailed distributions with implications for antivenom production Abstract Variability in the antibody response of horses used for snake antivenom manufacture is well recognized, yet its statistical structure and implications for industrial productivity remain poorly characterized. In this study, we quantified antivenom antibody titers by ELISA in a cohort of 14 horses immunized with venoms from the clinically most important snakes in sub-Saharan Africa. To integrate antibody levels with plasma availability, we calculated the Cumulative Plasma Productivity (CPP) by converting individual plasma volumes into titer-corrected equivalents and sequentially pooling these volumes according to their corrected contribution. Distributional analysis revealed right-skewed, heavy-tailed patterns better approximated by a log-normal model than by a strict Pareto (power-law) form, with approximately 20–3...

All genera of the world: Order Scorpiones (Animalia: Arthropoda: Arachnida)

 


All genera of the world: Order Scorpiones (Animalia: Arthropoda: Arachnida)

Abstract

The present contribution provides a consensus classification of the arachnid Order Scorpiones C.L. Koch, 1850, and updates the counts of extant and extinct genera and species through the end of 2025. Including the revisions implemented herein, there are 459 genus-group names available in Scorpiones by the end of 2025. Of these, 318 refer to currently accepted extant genera (220), subfossil genera (1) and extinct genera (97). Fifty-four genus-group names are newly synonymized, raising to 145 the number in synonymy, whereas sixteen genus-group names are revalidated and/or newly elevated to the rank of genus. Including the revisions implemented herein, Scorpiones includes 3,089 currently accepted species-group names (2,918 extant species, 1 subfossil species, and 170 extinct species) and 22 nomina dubia. Forty-seven species-group names are newly synonymized, whereas 43 species-group names are revalidated and/or newly elevated to the rank of species. 197 (62%) of the currently accepted genus-group names were described since 1950. Despite this descriptive activity, the suprageneric phylogeny and classification of Recent scorpions remains in a state of flux and largely decoupled from the phylogeny and classification of fossil forms.

Prendini, L. (2026). All genera of the world: Order Scorpiones (Animalia: Arthropoda). Megataxa, 19(2), 270–378. https://doi.org/10.11646/megataxa.19.2.2