On speciation and hybridization among closely related species: establishing an experimental breeding lineage between two species of <i>Automeris</i> Hübner moths (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae) and implications for taxonomy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Many species of plants and a few species of animals are believed to have resulted from hybridization of parental species, and the ability of species to occasionally hybridize in captivity and in nature is even more widespread. In the present study, we describe a hybridization experiment conducted in the laboratory between the sexually dimorphic Automeris io (Fabricius), a widespread, variable species ranging from Canada to Costa Rica, and its congener A. louisiana (Ferguson and Brou), a more local, sexually monomorphic species (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae). The A. louisiana populations occur in a highly specialized habitat—the coastal marshland along the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana and Texas and is nested inside the broad distribution of A. io, demonstrating strong differences from the latter in its ecology and morphology. No natural hybridization between the two species has been described. While the separate species status of A. io and A. louisiana is supported by morphology and ecology of their populations, we were able to create a hybrid lineage in the laboratory and maintained it for three generations. The hybrids were phenotypically intermediate between the parental species. Under a stricter reading of the biological species concept, such an ability to hybridize would be interpreted by some as a sign of conspecificity. Our experiments once again demonstrate the complexity of ‘species’ as a concept, which may need major redefinition in the popular interpretation of sciences.
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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) | 0.000 | 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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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".