Bug-Eat-Bug World: Assessing two Canadian Dicyphus species (Hemiptera: Miridae) for their potential as novel greenhouse biological control agents.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Greenhouse production represents a large component of Canadian agriculture, but native and invasive pests are a threat year-round. Diversifying pest management tools is essential to food security. Dicyphus hesperus (Hemiptera: Miridae) is a well-established native biological control agent applied in commercial greenhouses. Lab colonies were established for two previously unassessed native species—D. discrepans and D. famelicus. We assessed longevity and fecundity of D. famelicus on tomato, mullein, and strawberry in the presence and absence of prey, and found that D. famelicus is an obligate omnivore on mullein and tomato plants. All mirids lived longer when provided with prey regardless of host plant. Mirids required prey to produce a second generation of nymphs (p < 0.0001). We provided mirids with prey in an enclosed arena to assess their consumption of greenhouse whitefly, green peach aphid, and two-spotted spider mites. There was no difference between predator sex (p = 0.19) or species (p = 0.34) in consumption of green peach aphids. Dicyphus hesperus consumed more two-spotted spider mites (p = 0.016) than D. famelicus and D. discrepans. Female mirids consumed more whitefly than males, and D. hesperus consumed more than D. discrepans, with D. famelicus intermediary to both. Finally, greenhouse trials measured the potential of these predators to control pests on tomato and strawberry and assessed damage. Mirid species impacted whitefly population and mirid population (p < 0.0001) with higher whitefly and lower mirids in the control, D. discrepans and D. famelicus treatments than in the D. hesperus treatment. In strawberry crops, the diameter (p = 0.035) and mass (p >0.0001) of the fruit set was larger with mirids present. Implementing Dicyphus species could enhance native beneficial predator populations for sustainably managing pests in greenhouse production systems.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 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) | 0.001 | 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".