  We study the effects of taste degeneracy on the continuum scaling of the
localization properties of the staggered Dirac operator in high-temperature QCD
using numerical simulations on the lattice, focusing in particular on the
position of the mobility edge separating localized and delocalized modes at the
low end of the spectrum. We find that, if the continuum limit is approached at
fixed spatial volume, the restoration of taste symmetry leads to sizeable
systematic effects on estimates for the mobility edge obtained from spectral
statistics, which become larger and larger as the lattice spacing is decreased.
Such systematics, however, are found to decrease if the volume is increased at
fixed lattice spacing. We argue that spectral statistics estimate correctly the
position of the mobility edge in the thermodynamic limit at fixed spacing, and
support this with an independent numerical analysis based directly on the
properties of the Dirac eigenvectors, that are unaffected by taste degeneracy.
We then provide a theoretical argument justifying the exchange of the
thermodynamic and continuum limits when studying localization. This allows us
to use spectral statistics to determine the position of the mobility edge, and
to obtain a controlled continuum extrapolation of the mobility edge for the
first time.
