Liturgusa maya (Mantodea, Liturgusidae), the first record of an alien praying mantis in the Galápagos Islands
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Galápagos Archipelago, a UNESCO World Heritage site renowned for its unique biodiversity, faces increasing threats from the introduction of invasive species, particularly insects. This study documents the first record of an alien praying mantis, Liturgusa maya Saussure & Zehntner, 1894 (Liturgusidae), introduced to the Galápagos Islands, marking it as the second mantodean species reported from the archipelago. Liturgusa maya was initially detected through citizen science observations on the iNaturalist platform and taxonomically confirmed through field collections. Its presence in urban and rural areas of Santa Cruz Island since at least 2017, coupled with the apparent parthenogenetic nature of the introduced population, suggests that L. maya became established rapidly following a likely human-mediated introduction. A diagnosis of the species and its ootheca is provided to facilitate in-field identification, its habitat within Santa Cruz Island is delineated, and the potential ecological impacts of this introduction are explored. Additionally, the checklist of Mantodea in the Galápagos is updated, and their distribution is mapped to reflect the new findings. This discovery emphasizes the vulnerability of the Galápagos to biological invasions driven by increased human activity, highlighting the need for continued monitoring and management efforts to protect the archipelago’s native and fragile ecosystems.
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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 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".