Nectar plant preferences of <i>Hemaris</i> (Sphingidae) on co-occurring native <i>Cirsium</i> and non-native <i>Centaurea</i> (Asteraceae) inflorescences
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Preferences for certain nectar plants by moth pollinators have not been extensively studied, particularly seasonal switches in nectar diet. The genus Hemaris, found throughout North America and parts of other continents, is a useful new system to address questions of flower-insect interactions as the moths are relatively common and day-flying. In this study we address the following questions with a group of three Hemaris species. (1) Does Hemaris display a preference for foraging on the native swamp thistle, Cirsium discolor, over the non-native invasive knapweeds, Centaurea spp.? (2) What factors might be driving Hemaris’ preferences? The bloom periods of C. discolor and Centaurea overlap in the northeastern United States, with Centaurea blooming from approximately June through September and C. discolor blooming for approximately the first three weeks of August. Hemaris typically ecloses in the first week of July and fed on Centaurea until C. discolor bloomed. We tracked and recorded Hemaris visits to both plant species. During the co-blooming period of C. discolor and Centaurea, Hemaris visits significantly more C. discolor inflorescences, demonstrating a possible preference for the native species. Hemaris reverts to nectaring at the non-native Centaurea after native C. discolor’s bloom period ends. The nectar of C. discolor has a significantly higher sugar concentration than does the nectar of Centaurea; this difference may account for part of the moths’ preference for C. discolor.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".