Bird and beetle assemblages in mountain pine beetle killed forests and those subsequently burned: evidence for an effect of compound natural disturbances in British Columbia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The recent mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) outbreak in British Columbia (BC) is unprecedented in severity and extent, and has created a landscape of beetle-killed trees through which wildfires are now burning as compound natural disturbances. We asked the question: Is there an impact of grey phase MPB kill severity on bird and beetle assemblages, and does an effect persist following wildfire in BC? We compared the bird community of central interior BC against categorical and continuous disturbance severity gradients in unburned (MPB-only) and burned (MPB+FIRE) forests. Bird abundance and diversity was higher following fires, possibly supported by foraging resources from the positive abundance of beetles, however our findings suggest intermediate severities of compound disturbances show the greatest increases. In MPB-only areas, cumulative MPB kill was generally unimportant at the stand scale, but local gradients played a role in describing guild patterns, bird community membership, and single species abundances. In comparison, both burn severity and underlying MPB kill were important predictors in MPB+FIRE stands, suggesting evidence of a compound disturbance effect. We observed tenuous patterns that suggest the MPB outbreak might have detrimental effects on avian bark insectivores post-fire, but a positive influence on aerial foraging species. Further research is required on available resources for these guilds after compound MPB and wildfire disturbances.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".