Taxonomic revision and natural history of Metaphotina Piza, 1964 (Mantodea, Acontistidae)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The genus Metaphotina Piza, 1964 is revised based on comparative morphology. Three species are recognized: Metaphotina bimaculata (Saussure, 1870), Metaphotina austri Ferraz, Souza-Dias & Rivera, 2023, and a newly described species from Bahia, Brazil, Metaphotina akaraje sp. nov. Three new synonyms of M. bimaculata are established after a detailed analysis of primary type specimens and their taxonomic and nomenclatural history: Acontista brevipennis Saussure, 1872 syn. nov., Acontista rehni Giglio-Tos, 1927 syn. nov., and Metaphotina piracicabensis Piza, 1964 syn. nov. The analysis of distributional records confirm that Metaphotina is associated with semiarid environments across the eastern South American Dry Diagonal, mainly encompassing the Cerrado, Caatinga, and Chaco biomes. Field observations enabled the identification of the egg cases, discovering the ability of females to produce parthenogenetic offspring, and the recognition and formal description of the myrmecomorphic protonymph of M. bimaculata. Notably, we report on nymphs of M. bimaculata feeding on extrafloral nectaries (EFNs), marking the first known instance of praying mantises interacting with these plant structures. A dichotomous key, extensive graphic documentation of intra- and interspecific variation, and distribution maps are provided to facilitate the identification of Metaphotina spp..
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".