Stage‐specific responses to ecosystem alteration in an eruptive herbivorous insect
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Summary The stage‐specific responses of eruptive populations to ecosystem alterations have received little attention, despite the relevance of the issue for conservation biology and pest management. This study examined the hypothesis that forest thinning treatments affect the outbreak cycles ofNeodiprion abietis, a sawfly defoliator. The densities of eggs, early instar larvae, late‐instar larvae, cocoons and adults ofN. abietiswere monitored during an outbreak in a thinned and an adjacent untreated stand at each of three sites in western Newfoundland, Canada. The amplitude of population fluctuations was greater in thinned than in adjacent untreated stands at certain points in the increasing or peaking stages ofN. abietisoutbreaks for all life stages sampled. However, the timing and magnitude of differences in fluctuations attributed to thinning varied among the life stages ofN. abietis. The largest difference between stand types occurred in the generation preceding peak egg density, when adult densities were three times higher in thinned than untreated stands. Conversely, only moderate differences in egg density between stand types were observed in the following generation. Combined with the observation that the modes of population fluctuations occurred earlier in thinned stands, this suggests that adult dispersal resulted in a redistribution of eggs between thinned and untreated stands. Synthesis and applications. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that silvicultural practices involving a reduction in forest stand density may alter the outbreak cycles of an eruptive population, potentially increasing the severity of outbreaks in treated, as well as in adjacent untreated, stands. Hence, this study emphasizes the need to consider proactively the potential impact of silvicultural practices on species such asN. abietis, which are most abundant in low‐density stands. This field study also demonstrates that the response to ecosystem alteration of an outbreak population can vary with the different life stages of the studied organism, indicating that the detection of the impact of ecosystem alterations on a population can depend on the life stage sampled.
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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 | 0.000 | 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".