Twenty‐five years after: post‐introduction association of <i>Mecinus janthinus</i> s.l. with invasive host toadflaxes <i>Linaria vulgaris</i> and <i>Linaria dalmatica</i> in North America
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Linaria vulgaris, common or yellow toadflax, and Linaria dalmatica, Dalmatian toadflax (Plantaginaceae), are Eurasian perennial forbs invasive throughout temperate North America. These Linaria species have been the targets of classical biological control programmes in Canada and the USA since the 1960s. The first effective toadflax biological control agent, the stem‐mining weevil Mecinus janthinus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) was introduced from Europe in the 1990s. This weevil has become established on L. dalmatica and L. vulgaris in both countries, although it has shown greater success in controlling the former toadflax species. Genetic and ecological studies of native range M. janthinus populations revealed that weevils previously identified as a single species in fact include two cryptic species, now recognised as M. janthinus, associated with yellow toadflax, and the recently confirmed species Mecinus janthiniformis, associated with Dalmatian toadflax. The results of a comprehensive study characterising haplotype identities, distributions and frequencies within M. janthinus s.l. native range source populations were compared to those populations currently established in the USA and Canada. The presence of both Mecinus species in North America was confirmed, and revealed with a few exceptions a high and consistent level of host fidelity throughout the adopted and native ranges. Genetic analysis based on mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit II gene (mtCOII) defined the origin and records the subsequent North American establishment, by haplotype, of the European founder populations of M. janthinus (northern Switzerland and southern Germany) and M. janthiniformis (southern Macedonia), and provided population genetic indices for the studied populations. This analysis together with existing North American shipment receipt, release and rearing records elucidates probable redistribution routes and sources of both weevil species from initially released and established adopted range populations.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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".