Toward a Stable Global Noctuidae (Lepidoptera) Taxonomy
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Noctuidae are one of the world’s most diverse, ecologically successful, and economically important animal lineages with over 12,000 species in ~1,150 genera. We inferred a phylogeny using eight protein-coding genes for the global fauna, greatly expanding upon previous attempts to stabilize Noctuidae higher classification by sampling 341 genera (nearly half represented by their type species) representing 70/76 widely recognized family-group taxa: 20/21 subfamilies, 32/35 tribes, and 18/20 subtribes. We evaluated 17 subfamily-level taxa in detail, discussing adult and larval morphology, life histories, and taxonomic implications of our results. We significantly alter concepts of Acontiinae, Condicinae, Eustrotiinae, Metoponiinae, and Stiriinae. Our results supported recognition of two new subfamilies: Cobubathinae Wagner & Keegan, 2021 subf. nov. and Cropiinae Keegan & Wagner, 2021 subf. nov. Other nomenclatural changes we made are as follows. We moved: ‘Acontia’ viridifera (Hampson, 1910), ‘Azenia’ virida Barnes and McDunnough, 1916, Aleptinoides, Austrazenia, Chalcoecia, Megalodes, and Trogotorna to Chamaecleini in Acontiinae; Apaustis to, and reinstated Emmelia as a valid genus in Acontiinae; Allophyes and Meganephria to Cuculliinae; ‘Plagiomimicus’ navia (Harvey, 1875), Airamia, Alvaradoia, Hypoperigea, Neotarache, and Mesotrosta to Condicinae; Axenus, Azenia, Metaponpneumata, Sexserrata, and Tristyla to Metoponiinae; ‘Paramiana’ canoa (Barnes, 1907) to Noctuinae; Aucha, Cobubatha, and Tripudia to Cobubathinae; Anycteola and Supralathosea to Oncocnemidinae; Cropia to Cropiinae; Desmoloma to Dyopsinae; Eviridemas and Gloanna to Bryophilinae; Fota and Stilbia to Stiriinae; and Copibryophila, Homolagoa, and Tyta to Noctuidae incertae sedis. We conclude with discussion of instances where current understanding of noctuid biogeography and life histories were changed by our results.
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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 | 0.001 |
| 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 it