Additional steps need to be taken to determine whether
scorpion fluorescence has an adaptive function in UV
detection. Although our assay has been useful for detecting
a response and a potential deterrence threshold, it is also
laborious, time consuming and requires a large number of
trials to register an effect. It would be helpful to develop a
behavioral assay that measures individual responses to light of
various intensities and wavelengths, perhaps focused on
various body regions. Also, it could be useful to reduce the
fluorescence through bleaching (Kloock 2009) or other means
to see if the behaviors we observe can be compromised.
Finally, some members of the family Chaerilidae Simon have
been recently reported to lack the fluorescence phenomenon
(Lourenc¸o 2012). These animals could be useful in compar-
ative light detection assays with normally fluorescent animals.