Filamentous fungal associates of the alder bark beetle, Alniphagus aspericollis, including an undescribed species of Neonectria
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Bark beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae; Scolytinae) are tree-infesting insects that consume subcortical tissues and fungi. Species capable of killing their host trees are most commonly associated with conifers, as very few bark beetle species infest and kill hardwood hosts directly. The alder bark beetle, Alniphagus aspericollis, is a hardwood-killing bark beetle that colonizes and kills red alder, Alnus rubra. Conifer-killing bark beetles have well-known associations with symbiotic ophiostomatoid fungi that facilitate their life histories, but it is unknown whether A. aspericollis has any fungal associates. This study was conducted to identify any consistent filamentous fungal associates of A. aspericollis and characterize the consistency of observed beetle-fungus relationships. Beetles and gallery phloem samples were collected from seven sites throughout the Greater Vancouver region in British Columbia, Canada. Filamentous fungi were isolated from these samples and identified by DNA barcoding using the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region and other barcode regions for resolution to the species-level for the most dominant isolates. The most common fungal associate was a previously undescribed Neonectria major-like fungus, Neonectria sp. nov., which was isolated from ~67% of adult beetles, ~59% of phloem samples, and ~94% of the beetle-infested trees. Ophiostoma quercus was isolated from ~28% of adult beetles, ~9% of phloem samples, and ~56% of infested trees and deemed a casual associate of A. aspericollis, while a putatively novel species of Ophiostoma was more infrequently isolated from A. aspericollis and its galleries. Cadophora spadicis, a new record for red alder, was rarely isolated and is probably coincidentally carried by A. aspericollis. Overall, A. aspericollis was only loosely associated with ophiostomatoid fungi, suggesting that these fungi have little ecological significance in the beetle-tree interaction, while Neonectria sp. nov. may be a symbiote of A. aspericollis that is vectored by the beetle.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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".