Native range surveys for natural enemies of Anthonomus rubi and effects of host plant bud size in the introduced range
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Species introductions to novel environments can result in economic and ecological damage if those species become invasive, which may be likely with abundant resources and in the absence of co-evolved natural enemies. The invasive strawberry blossom weevil, Anthonomus rubi (Herbst, 1795) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), lacks co-evolved natural enemies in its introduced range of Southwestern British Columbia, Canada, and feeds upon a variety of crop and non-crop host plants. I conducted surveys, with collaborators from the EU-based Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI) to identify potential natural enemies of A. rubi in its native range (Europe) that could be considered for future biological control programs. I also recorded host plant species that supported successful parasitism. Then, in the introduced range, I evaluated the effects of host plant species and bud size on the size of adult A. rubi at emergence, which has been used as a proxy for insect fitness. Surveys in the native range showed A. rubi and its natural enemies develop in a variety of host plant species, with damaged flower buds collected from 13 host plant species in the family Rosaceae over three years. In addition, I identified 12 parasitoid species associated with A. rubi, including seven not previously associated with A. rubi, in its native range. In the introduced range of southwestern BC, Canada, damaged flower buds from introduced blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) supported larger sizes of weevils in comparison with those emerging from cultivated strawberry flower buds. Weevil size was positively correlated with strawberry bud size. Adult weevil size increased throughout the season. Together, these results show the impact host plant traits can have on weevil size. I discuss how this information could be used in the future for the rearing of associated biological controls.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 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) | 0.001 | 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".