Erebidae systematics: past, present, and future—progress in understanding a diverse lepidopteran lineage
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Erebidae, the largest family of Lepidoptera with approximately 25,000 known species globally, forms the major clade of the superfamily Noctuoidea. Currently classified into 18 subfamilies, erebids display extraordinary morphological and behavioral diversity, with lineages that include adult wingspans ranging from 6 to 280 mm, ultrasonic anti-bat defenses such as sonar jamming, and caterpillars exhibiting a wide array of feeding strategies, including detritivory and specialization on toxic plants. Historically, their classification has been unstable, undergoing significant revisions due largely to advances in molecular phylogenetics. Recent phylogenomic studies have supported the monophyly of Erebidae and some of its subfamilies, although the composition of and relationships among many subfamilies remain unresolved. Understanding the taxonomy and phylogenetic structure of Erebidae is crucial for evolutionary biology, conservation, agriculture, and biosecurity, as many species are significant pollinators, pests, or key components of food webs. With environmental changes such as habitat loss and climate change intensifying, documenting erebid diversity is increasingly urgent. Research should prioritize tropical regions, where erebids are most diverse, and leverage techniques such as whole-genome sequencing and expanded taxon sampling of museum specimens to produce a stable, well-resolved classification of this ecologically significant family of Lepidoptera.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
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".