EDITORIAL—A REVIVED FOCUS ON THE PRAYING MANTISES (INSECTA: MANTODEA)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
With approximately 2400 described species distributed worldwide (Ehrmann, 2002), praying mantises (Mantodea) exhibit extensive variation in morphological adaptations and life history strategies, typically in connection to their strict predatory habits. Praying mantis diversity is frequently under-appreciated, mostly because of their sedentary and highly cryptic lifestyle, often resorting to various forms of mimicry and mimesis, resembling sticks, flowers, tree bark, bird droppings, pebbles, moss, lichen, and green and dead leafs. Because of these attributes, they are difficult to collect and observe in the field. Certain aspects of praying mantis ecology, behavior and physiology have historically received more attention than others, though most studies focus on a handful of species from temperate regions (see Prete et al., 1999). In contrast, tropical regions (which hold the bulk of Mantodea biodiversity) have received limited attention by researchers, that attention often punctuated. Their apparent lack of economic importance, rarity in collections and the ongoing “taxonomic impediment”, have all conspired to impede taxonomic and evolutionary studies. The consequences of these deficiencies are far reaching. For example, the current dearth of detailed taxonomic treatments and identification keys prevent the accurate assessment of regional faunas (Rivera, 2010). Further, the lack of a solid taxonomic foundation precludes the formal documentation of relevant aspects of natural history, a discipline that has also faced a steady decline since the early 20th Century (Hampton & Wheeler, 2012), but nonetheless is fundamental for fostering scientific inquiry and hypotheses formulation. The diversity of ecological strategies and adaptations of mantises, their role as predators, and their well-known (but little understood) cannibalistic sexual behaviors, make of these charismatic insects also outstanding model organisms to explore broader questions in ecology and evolutionary biology.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.030 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.012 | 0.018 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.025 | 0.032 |
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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".