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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2025.02.23.639543

pholidosis: an R package to compare biological surface patterns

Krone, I. W.
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Abstract

Atop the heads of many lizards and snakes sit complex patterns of flattened scales, differing in their sizes, shapes, colors, textures, and inter-relationships. These patterns of head scalation-called "pholidosis" - are often diagnostic to species or genera and therefore of great importance to reptile taxonomy, yet they have never been investigated in a detailed comparative context. Similar patterns can be seen in the scutes of turtle shells and the "cells" of insect wings; these each consist of a surface pattern made up of discrete units that can be considered homologous between individuals, populations, and species. Here, I describe an R package, pholidosis, designed to analyze these patterns as networks, providing tools for their construction, analysis, and visualization, and comparative analysis via an edit distance metric.

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Krone, I. W.. 2025-02-28. pholidosis: an R package to compare biological surface patterns. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.02.23.639543

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