Bibliographic record
Abstract
Lichenologists tend to concentrate their lichen hunting in interesting rural habitats, and most of the species found in field guides are those that occur away from busy habitats in populated places.This handy and well-thought out guide to urban lichens reminds us that there is indeed quite a variety of lichens to be found in densely populated cities.The guide's range is the northeastern US megalopolis, and the large Canadian cities of Ottawa and Toronto, with an acknowledged New York City bias.It covers approximately sixty species in detail.There are suggested habitats to explore in any northeastern city that are relevant to Halifax and urban areas in Atlantic Canada, as well as specific locations for lichen hunting in New York City.Urban Lichens is a comfortable size, 8x5 inches (21x12 cm), has place-marking flaps back and front, and at 9.75 ounces (270 g) is light and easy to carry.Each described species has one or more photographs to accompany it, along with a species description, where to find it, and notes that include potential lookalikes.All of the species photos have either a coin or a Metro-card (a train pass the same size as a credit card) as a size reference.The photographically illustrated glossary is very useful for a beginner, though some unfamiliar yet germane terms are missing, e.g., leprose, fibrils.Most of the introductory material on lichens, covering their structure, lifestyles and uses, is aimed at making a guide that is "accessible to everyone and anyone who might be interested" in lichens.Indeed, the conversational tone and clear descriptions are well suited to that end.Yet there are sections that, given an interested but largely untutored reader, should have started with the simplest most visual concepts rather than the most complex.For example, the actual progression of lichen reproduction is somewhat complicated and does not make the easiest reading.For the novice, reading about sexual reproduction (fungal spores finding a compatible alga), apothecial shape and colour, etc., would be easier to grapple with before
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.143 | 0.050 |
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".