Competition among invasive and endemic carrion fly species in the <scp>Galapagos Islands</scp> with implications for biological control risk assessment
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The composition of the necrobiome community in the Galapagos Islands is poorly understood, and nothing is known about the dynamics between endemic species and those introduced through human activity. To determine the composition of the carrion fly community, specifically members of the families Muscidae, Calliphoridae and Sarcophagidae, we deployed four kinds of carrion bait traps during the cool and hot seasons at two lowland and two highland sites on Santa Cruz Island within the Galapagos archipelago. We also conducted a laboratory experiment to assess resource competition between fly species encountered in the baiting study. Of the eight fly species found in our baited traps, all were introduced except for the endemic sarcophagid, Sarothromyiops dasycnemis. Four endemic and one native carrion‐feeding species that had been previously recorded on this island were not found. The introduced sarcophagid, Peckia chrysostoma , was the most abundant fly species, comprising over half of the collected specimens, and it was highly dominant at the lowland sites. The endemic species, S. dasycnemis , was only recorded at the lowland sites during the hot season. On the other hand, the calliphorid species were dominant at the highland sites. Experiments demonstrated that P. chrysostoma is a strong competitor against other carrion fly species in the Galapagos necrobiome, including the endemic S. dasycnemis . A comparison of our data with historical records, combined with the results of our laboratory study, leads to the conclusion that introduced carrion fly species, such as P. chrysostoma , represent a threat to endemic carrion fly species, such as S. dasycnemis . Three parasitoid species were reared from 19% of the collected fly puparia. Two of these species attacked fly larvae ( Brachymeria podagrica and Aphaereta sp.), whereas one species attacked fly puparia ( Exoristobia sp.) We discuss our results in light of the possibility of the purposeful introduction of a parasitoid as a biological control agent against the avian vampire fly ( Philornis downsi ; Diptera: Muscidae) in Galapagos.
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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 | 0.000 | 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) | 0.002 | 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".