The introduced terrestrial slugs <i>Ambigolimax nyctelius</i> (Bourguignat, 1861) and <i>Ambigolimax valentianus</i> (Férussac, 1821) (Gastropoda: Limacidae) in California, with a discussion of taxonomy, systematics, and discovery by citizen science
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Ambigolimax valentianus and Ambigolimax nyctelius are synanthropic terrestrial slugs that have been dispersed widely by human activity. Herein, these species are reported from Los Angeles County, California, as a result of contributions to SLIME (Snails and Slugs Living in Metropolitan Environments), a citizen science project initiated by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and hosted online by iNaturalist. Importantly, collected specimens and specimen data of A. nyctelius are the first of this species in California and the first records to document it in North America since 1960. Species identifications of A. valentianus and A. nyctelius, which are phenotypically similar, were made by examination of specimens’ distal genitalia and analysis of their mtDNA barcoding gene, COI (A. nyctelius, n = 18 and A. valentianus, n = 11). Slug radulae and jaws were examined and are figured, but were not diagnostic to species. Phylogenetic analyses of COI haplotypes from both Ambigolimax species and six other limacids resolve A. nyctelius and A. valentianus as monophyletic sister taxa. However, morphological and molecular data from taxa not included in this study are needed to substantiate this relationship and inform a revision of at least 10 genera in the family Limacidae. Inconsistencies in the literature regarding the year of Férussac’s species description of A. valentianus (as Limax valentianus) are also discussed and resolved.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".