Expansion of the invasive Balkan slug Tandonia kusceri (Stylommatophora: Milacidae): A new frontier in northern Ukraine and other new records
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The distribution of the invasive slug Tandonia kusceri is reviewed and mapped with our new findings and previously unpublished recent reports based on photographs from citizen science databases (iNaturalist, UkrBIN). Two new colonies of T. kusceri were found and monitored in Kyiv city (Northern Ukraine) during the 2021–2022. These colonies are about 350 km north from the nearest previously published records of this species, as well as any other species of Milacidae in Eastern Europe. The slugs inhabit the urban open and semi-open landscapes of Kyiv city together with several other invasive molluscs, in one locality notably together with Oxychilus translucidus, Harmozica ravergiensis and Xerolenta obvia. One specimen of T. kusceri was found in a basement of a private estate in Radyvyliv town (Rivne region, Northern Ukraine) in 2020, but it is unknown whether it represents an established colony. Previously unpublished reports of T. kusceri on iNaturalist include two reliable findings from the Caucasian region, in Georgia and Russia, both in 2021. These are the first reports of any Tandonia in Caucasus, as well as in the mentioned countries, with one in Georgia being the eastmost frontier for this genus. In addition to a previously published 2013 report of T. kusceri near Chicago, USA, there are multiple iNaturalist reports of this slug in southern Ontario, Canada (600 km east of Chicago), starting from 2017. Moreover, there are several new reports of T. kusceri in Ukraine, including Kherson, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rig, Marhanets and Kamianets-Podilskyi cities. Considering that most of our new T. kusceri records are from the 2020s, it is most likely that slug has invaded these regions very recently and is still continuing to expand northward and eastward in Europe. This species is expected to further extend its range both in Europe and North America.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 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 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".