Preemptive Circular Defence of Immature Insects: Definition and Occurrences of Cycloalexy Revisited
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Cycloalexy was coined by Vasconcellos-Neto and Jolivet in 1988 and further defined by Jolivet and collaborators in 1990 in reference to a specific type of circular defence. The term has been applied to numerous organisms, including adult insects, nymphs, and even vertebrates, but has lost precision with the accumulation of anecdotal reports not addressing key elements of the behaviour as first defined. We review the literature and propose three criteria that are sufficient and necessary to define the behaviour: (1) individuals form a circle; (2) defensive attributes of the individuals are positioned on the periphery of the circle, and as a result, the periphery of the circle uniformly contains either heads or abdomens; (3) animals preemptively adopt the circle as a resting formation, meaning it is not necessary to observe predation. When these considerations are taken into account, cycloalexy appears less common in nature than the literature suggests. We argue that unequivocal cases of cycloalexy have been found only in sawflies (Tenthredinoidea: Pergidae, Argidae), leaf beetles (Chrysolemidae: Galerucinae, Cassidinae, Chrysomelinae, Criocerinae), weevils (Curculionidae:Phelypera distigma), and midges (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae,Forcipomyia). Reports of cycloalexy in caterpillars (Saturniidae: Hemileucinae:Lonomia, Papilionidae) require further documentation. We report one new case of cycloalexy in thrips (Thysanoptera) and question reports of cycloalexic behaviour in other taxa.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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 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".