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Record W4415758378 · doi:10.1101/2025.10.30.685713

Phylogenomics and species delimitation in the brown snake <i>Storeria dekayi</i> (Natricidae)

2025· preprint· W4415758378 on OpenAlexaboutno aff
Victor Gabriel Castillo-Sanchez, Adrián Nieto‐Montes de, John J. Wiens, Marysol Trujano‐Ortega, Uri Omar García‐Vázquez

Bibliographic record

VenuebioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025
Typepreprint
Language
FieldEnvironmental Science
TopicAmphibian and Reptile Biology
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsSubspeciesParaphylyPhylogenomicsPhylogenetic treePopulationPhylogenetics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract The brown snake, Storeria dekayi , is distributed across southeastern Canada, the eastern United States, and eastern Mexico, with isolated records in Central America. Despite its broad range, S. dekayi is currently recognized as a single species. Historically, eight subspecies were described based primarily on head coloration patterns, but subsequent genomic analyses of populations from the U.S.A led to their synonymization. Recently, a population discovered in the Cuatro Cienegas Basin, Coahuila, Mexico has been suggested to represent an undescribed endemic species. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationships within S. dekayi , with an emphasis on the previously unstudied populations from Mexico and Central America. To this end, we generated genomic data (ddRADseq) to conduct phylogenetic analyses, species-tree estimation, population-structure analyses, and species delimitation. Concatenated likelihood analyses estimated a tree in which populations of S. dekayi from the south-central U.S. were paraphyletic relative to an undescribed species from the Cuatro Cienegas Basin. Population structure and species delimitation analyses suggest the existence of three distinct species, including the populations from eastern North America (recognized as S. dekayi ), the population from Cuatro Cienegas, and the populations of S. dekayi from eastern Mexico and Central America. However, we conservatively recognize only two species.

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 imitation

Not 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.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.003
Threshold uncertainty score0.006

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0010.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

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.

Opus teacher head0.013
GPT teacher head0.201
Teacher spread0.188 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

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".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

Explore more

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