Presence and distribution of alfalfa weevil (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) and broad-nosed weevils (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) in alfalfa fields grown for seed in southern Alberta
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The alfalfa weevil ( Hypera postica (Gyllenhal), Curculionidae: Coleoptera) is a major defoliating pest of alfalfa ( Medicago sativa L., Fabaceae). High-density populations cause significant damage through leaf skeletonization. This study examines the location of adult alfalfa weevil in alfalfa fields grown for seed at various times throughout the growing season using different sampling techniques. Five fields with established alfalfa stands grown for seed were selected in 2021 and 2022, and eight fields in 2023. Alfalfa weevils captured in emergence cages, pitfall traps, sweep-net samples, and soil samples were collected in all study years. In 2023, the effect of alfalfa stand age on weevil abundance was tested. Sweep-net samples were more effective for capturing and monitoring adult alfalfa weevils than pitfall traps and soil samples, and also predicted subsequent larval densities. More adult alfalfa weevils were captured in emergence cages positioned outside alfalfa fields, revealing that some adult alfalfa weevils overwinter outside the field. More female than male alfalfa weevils were captured in the overwintered generation collected in the spring 2021. More overwintered alfalfa weevil adults were collected from mature than young alfalfa stands, suggesting the preference for or lack of dispersal from established alfalfa fields by adult alfalfa weevils. Weekly average temperature and relative humidity had variable effects on capture of alfalfa weevil adults in sweep-net samples. Two species of broad-nosed weevils, alfalfa curculio ( Sitona lineellus Bonsdorff) and pea leaf weevil ( Sitona lineatus L.) were identified from the by-catch of sweep-net samples.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".