Audit and outputs

Evidence should be visible, versioned, and difficult to overstate.

Selected development results are shown with their limits. Biological images are acquired microscopy records; charts and overlays are derived from data.

Development audit

Alpha 2C: a localization component with a locked final test.

The reference dataset contains 779 microscope fields and 1,620 annotations across 13 source categories. Partitions are field-level, and the 117-field final test has not been used for selection.

Dataset split diagram
467 training fields, 117 validation fields, 78 diagnostic-development fields, and 117 locked final-test fields.
Localization performance comparison
Developmental diagnostic split: centroid capture rose from 0.433 to 0.977 while candidate burden fell from 37.7 to 25.0 boxes per field.

These results support candidate localization only. They do not establish species identification, segmentation accuracy, clinical performance, or final generalization.

Failure is part of the record

Good, partial, missed, and over-proposed fields all matter.

Contact sheets are retained because aggregate metrics can hide systematic problems: small objects, weak contrast, clutter, border effects, look-alike debris, overlapping objects, and fields that produce too many candidates.

Those failure classes inform the next acquisition round and prevent the public narrative from being built only from visually satisfying examples.

Microscope contact sheet with many candidate regions
Hard fields are not discarded; they become stress-test material.
Morpho-Barcode concept

One specimen, one portable evidence package.

The long-term deliverable is a specimen-level record that can be audited and reinterpreted as methods improve.

Primary evidence

Host and collection event, specimen and voucher IDs, raw images, infection site, preservation, and acquisition metadata.

Derived evidence

Candidate regions, masks, landmarks, outlines, measurements, shape variables, image-quality notes, and comparison material.

Interpretation

Evidence tier, visible characters, uncertainty flags, allowable language, reviewer decision, and molecular status when available. FAME, FLAME, VOID, HookFuse, and FUZZARIA states may travel with the record without becoming the biological result.

Morphology atlas / selected development material

The image is only the beginning of the record.

Orientation, scale, specimen linkage, and review status determine whether a visible structure can support comparison, measurement, or only a cautious note.

These SEM crops show how whole-region context and finer attachment morphology can be retained as separate but linked views. Public figures remain intentionally less specific than the internal review record.

See the V10 evidence surfaces →
SEM overview of a pentastome anterior region
Region context
SEM close view of selected pentastome structures
Selected structure
SEM close view of attachment structures
Fine surface morphology
Gold / Iron review

Curation tiers—not biological grades.

Gold and Iron are internal review strata used to keep reference-quality evidence separate from material that expands coverage, challenges assumptions, or requires additional review.

GoldReference materialClear positives, difficult contextual positives, and hard negatives selected for close review.
IronExpansion materialBroader variation, new acquisition conditions, and challenge cases that strengthen the dataset without being treated as settled truth.
The tier describes curation status. It does not replace a voucher, expert review, or molecular confirmation.
Publication pipeline

Selected outputs in development.

Natural history / ecology

Introduced reptile parasite communities

Host-level prevalence, richness, intensity, coinfection, season, body size, and habitat context after dataset reconciliation.

Host association

Potential native-pentastome acquisition

A voucher-first assessment of a candidate host switch in an introduced reptile.

Morphometrics

Progressing morphology

Replicated developmental or size-related trajectories in body and attachment-structure geometry.

Computational methods

Recall-first full-field localization

Field-level partitioning, review burden, failure taxonomy, and external challenge testing.

EDRR

Boa imperator in Everglades National Park

A separate early-detection and rapid-response case study integrating field discovery, morphology, genetics, necropsy, and management response.

Framework

TEGUMENT–HookFuse–FUZZARIA

A later synthesis paper on evidence standardization, uncertainty, review, and morphology-first computational support.

View literature cited