Transfer of <i>Nosema locustae</i> (Microsporidia) to <i>Antonospora locustae</i> n. comb. Based on Molecular and Ultrastructural Data<sup>1</sup>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Nosema locustae is a microsporidian parasite of grasshopper pests that is used as a biological control agent, and is one of the emerging model systems for microsporidia. Due largely to its diplokaryotic nuclei, N. locustae has been classified in the genus Nosema, a large genus with members that infect a wide variety of insects. However, some molecular studies have cast doubt on the validity of certain Nosema species, and on the taxonomic position of N. locustae. To clarify the affinities of this important insect parasite we sequenced part of the rRNA operon of N. locustae and conducted a phylogenetic analysis using the complete small subunit rRNA gene. Nosema locustae is only distantly related to the nominotypic N. bombycis, and is instead closely related to Antonospora scoticae, a recently described parasite of bees. We examined the ultrastructure of mature N. locustae spores, and found the spore wall to differ from true Nosema species in having a multi-layered exospore resembling that of Antonospora (one of the distinguishing features of that genus). Based on both molecular and morphological evidence, therefore, we propose transferring N. locustae to the genus Antonospora, as Antonospora locustae n. comb.
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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 | 0.001 | 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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 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".