Molecular insights into the lichen genus <i>Alectoria</i> (Parmeliaceae) in North America
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Alectoria is a genus of fruticose lichen characterised by the presence of usnic acid and conspicuous raised pseudocyphellae. This genus is particularly diverse and abundant in montane, boreal, and Arctic regions of North America. Because intermediate forms have been reported for several species of Alectoria on the continent, it has been suggested that these species were initially delimited based on the extremes of morphological gradients. Here, we use the results of molecular phylogenetic analyses of two nuclear genes, ITS and Mcm7, with 48 representatives of 9 taxa to examine the delineation of 5 taxa that have been previously shown to be related to, or confused with, A. sarmentosa: A. fallacina, A. imshaugii, A. sarmentosa var. sorediosa, A. sarmentosa subsp. vexillifera, and A. vancouverensis. Alectoria fallacina was found to be well-supported and distantly related to A. sarmentosa. Conversely, the other four taxa were recovered as a single monophyletic group with little internal structure, which did not support the presently defined morphological species. A provisional taxonomic treatment is proposed pending more detailed study at the population level. Alectoria sarmentosa var. sorediosa is recognized at the species level, which necessitates the new combination: A. sorediosa. An updated key to the North American species of Alectoria is also provided.
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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) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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".