Expanded geographical distribution of <i>Sarcosoma globosum</i> (witches cauldron) in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
<i>Sarcosoma globosum</i> (witches cauldron) is a threatened species of pezizomycete (Ascomycete) fungus primarily documented in spruce (<i>Picea</i> spp.) forests of northern Europe. Sporadic reports of <i>S. globosum</i> have been reported in eastern North America, but it has been suggested that these may have been misidentified. Importantly, the species has not been officially reported in western North America. Following reported observations of <i>S. globosum</i> in British Columbia, Canada, we conducted a citizen science survey to document its distribution and occurrence over four consecutive years (2021–2024). Firstly, we verified that sporocarps collected in eastern (New Brunswick) and western (British Columbia) Canada were <i>S. globosum</i> via the morphological, ecological, and phylogenetic (analysis of the ITS gene) species concepts. Secondly, <i>S. globosum</i> was documented in all four years of the survey over a wide geographical area in British Columbia. Finally, we mapped the Canadian distribution of <i>S. globosum</i> based on publicly available databases. The species appears to be found across Canada (British Columbia to Nova Scotia), where spruce-dominated forests are present, supporting the current Canadian national conservation status of ‘Apparently Secure/Secure’ (N4, N5). However, its habitat remains threatened by climate change, forest fires, and logging activities that may limit its future geographical distribution. This study presents the first documented occurrence of <i>S. globosum</i> in British Columbia, expanding the species’ known distribution to western Canada.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".