Low extinction risk in the flower fly fauna of northeastern North America
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Introduction Flower flies (Diptera: Syrphidae; also known as hoverflies) are important pollinators of wild and cultivated plants. Other pollinators such as bees have declined, and many flower flies in Europe and Chile have been documented to be threatened with extinction. The status of other flower fly faunas is currently unknown. Aims/Methods We assessed the rangewide conservation status of flower flies that occur in Northeastern North America where there is a diverse fauna of 323 native species. Over 150,000 records, drawn from a locality database compiled for a recently published field guide, additional museum records, recent field surveys, and citizen science records, informed the assessments. Results We found that a minimum of 11 species are at risk of rangewide extinction, 267 have lower extinction risk, and 45 had insufficient data to assess. Our best estimate is that 4.0% of species are at risk, assuming data-insufficient species are at risk at the same rate as data sufficient species. The range for this estimate is 3.4–17.3% at risk, assuming that none or all data-insufficient species are at risk, respectively. Discussion Factors causing extinction risk in the fauna we studied are poorly known, although habitat destruction likely explains the decline in one species. While at-risk species mostly have saprophagus or brood parasitic larvae, trophic relationships are confounded by phylogeny (the subfamilies Eristalinae and Microdontinae account for most saprophagus or brood parasitic species). The broad geographical ranges of most species likely contributed to the low rate of imperilment. Implications for insect conservation The small percentage of at-risk flower flies in northeastern North America bodes well for the health of ecosystems there. The results contrast with the situation in Europe, underscoring geographic heterogeneity in flower fly conservation status.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 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".