Scuttle fly infestation in deteriorating fluid-preserved specimens (Diptera: Phoridae: Megaselia scalaris)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract An infestation of scuttle flies, Megaselia scalaris (Loew, 1866), was found in deteriorating 19th century fluid-preserved specimens contained in a glass tank in the Vertebrate Spirit Store at Oxford University Museum of Natural History. A test showed ethanol levels were inadequate to maintain specimen preservation, and a vast amount of fluid had evaporated, leaving the specimens exposed and in a state of decomposition. The conditions provided a suitable habitat for the infestation and subsequent reproduction of M. scalaris. Here, I provide a method for the removal of M. scalaris from infested museum collections, as well as notes on their behavior and the conditions that promote fly infestation. Remedial salvage of the specimen that involves refixation, staging, and final preservation in 75% industrial methylated spirits (IMS/H2O) is described.
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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 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 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) | 0.001 | 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".