Host Specificity of<i>Hypena opulenta</i>: A Potential Biological Control Agent of<i>Vincetoxicum</i>in North America
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A biological control program has been initiated against the European swallow-worts Vincetoxicum nigrum (L.) Moench and V. rossicum (Kleopow) Barbar. (Family Apocynaceae) that have become invasive in North America. The leaf-feeding moth, Hypena opulenta Christoph (Lepidoptera: Erebidae), originating from eastern Europe, has been under measurement as a potential biological control agent of swallow-worts since 2006. In this study we measured the host range of H. opulenta by screening 82 potential host plant species for larval development under no-choice conditions. In addition, we also monitored female fecundity, longevity, and oviposition preference among suitable larval hosts. Successful larval development occurs only on Vincetoxicum spp. Partial larval development by one larva was observed on Boehmeria cyclindrica (L.) Sw. (Urticaceae) to the final instar, but this individual failed to pupate. Exploratory feeding occurred on Gonolobus stephanotrichus Griseb. (Apocynaceae) and Urtica dioica L. (Urticaceae), but all larvae failed to develop past the first and second instar, respectively. Additional testing with mature larvae on a subset of the plant species demonstrates that no species outside the genus Vincetoxicum are suitable for complete larval development of H. opulenta. The longevity and fecundity of females raised on each target weed are similar and gravid females do not display an oviposition preference among Vincetoxicum spp. Hypena opulenta does not present a risk to any native plant species or species of economic importance in North America. Petitions have been submitted for experimental open-field releases of H. opulenta in the United States and Canada.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".