Immature Stages of the Masked Birch Caterpillar, Drepana arcuata (Lepidoptera: Drepanidae) With Comments on Feeding and Shelter Building
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The masked birch caterpillar, Drepana arcuata (Lepidoptera: Drepanidae) is an excellent model for studying vibratory communication and sociality in larval insects. Vibratory communication occurs throughout development, but the functions of signals are reported to change as larvae change from gregarious to solitary lifestyles. To better understand the sensory ecology of these caterpillars, it is important to study their life history. Here, we describe the morphological and behavioral characteristics of larvae by confirming the number of instars, identifying their distinguishing morphological features, and noting changes in feeding and shelter construction. Five instars were confirmed based on the number of head capsules collected for individuals throughout development, and by using Dyar’s rule, which predicts the number of instars based on geometric growth patterns of head capsules. Frequency distributions of head capsule widths showed five separate peaks, indicating that this is a useful parameter for distinguishing between instars. Other morphological features including body length, shape, and banding patterns of head capsules, and morphology of thoracic verrucae are helpful in distinguishing among instars. Feeding behavior changes from leaf skeletonization in first and second instars to leaf cutting in fourth and fifth instars, with third instars transitioning between these feeding styles as they grow. Early instars typically construct communal silken shelters whereas late instars live solitarily in leaf shelters. These results provide essential life history information on the masked birch caterpillar that will enable future investigations on the proximate and ultimate mechanisms associated with social behavior and communication in larval insects.
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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) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
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".