Revision of Nicrophorus in part: new species and inferred phylogeny of the nepalensis-group based on evidence from morphology and mitochondrial DNA (Coleoptera:Silphidae:Nicrophorinae)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Carrion beetles of the genus Nicrophorus Fabricius, 1775 (Silphidae) are well known for their biparental brood care and monopolisation of small vertebrate carcasses in subterranean crypts. Although the taxonomy of New World species has received modern attention, the fauna of Asia, primarily of the nepalensis-group of species, has not. Herein we revise this species-group and describe as new the following seven species: Nicrophorus charon Sikes & Madge (Sulawesi), Nicrophorus herscheli Sikes & Madge (Sumatra), Nicrophorus insignis Sikes & Madge (Flores Island), Nicrophorus melissae Sikes & Madge (Nepal, Bhutan), Nicrophorus reticulatus Sikes & Madge (Guadalcanal), Nicrophorus schawalleri Sikes & Madge (Gansu, Shaanxi, Sichuan Province) and Nicrophorus trumboi Sikes & Madge (Nepal, Bhutan). We obtained a preliminary phylogeny using morphology and mtDNA (COII). This was inferred using maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods with the Mkv and GTR+I+G models (parsimony was rejected by the Akaike information criterion for being excessively parameter-rich). The phylogenetic signal in the morphological dataset was not strong and results were confounded by a ‘long-branch’ species, N. reticulatus. The signal was stronger in the combined dataset and the COII-only dataset. The molecular phylogeny supported the new status of species N. trumboi and N. melissae. Support was found for a mainland origin of the group with subsequent radiations into the Malay Archipelago.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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 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".