Invasive Asian earthworms of the genus <i>Amynthas</i> alter microhabitat use by terrestrial salamanders
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Invasive earthworms are rapidly transforming detrital communities in North America. Recent studies have investigated the effects of European earthworms, whereas Asian earthworms, such as species of the genus Amynthas Kinberg, 1867, remain understudied. Amynthas is a surface-dwelling earthworm that voraciously consumes the litter layer of temperate forest floor habitats. The accumulation of detritus is important for the terrestrial Eastern Red-backed Salamanders (Plethodon cinereus (Green, 1818)) because this microhabitat provides the matrix through which salamanders travel when foraging, searching for mates, and dispersing. We examined the effect of Amynthas on the activity of “naïve” (no history of co-occurrence with Amynthas) and “experienced” (recent co-occurrence with Amynthas) salamanders in laboratory microcosms. We hypothesized that earthworms would disturb normal salamander activity through the reduction of leaf litter and physical impediment, with greater negative effects on naïve salamanders encountering this “novel” invasive species. Consistent with published studies, earthworm presence significantly decreased leaf-litter mass over time. Prior experience with earthworms did not appear to influence salamander response. However, earthworm presence had a significant effect on salamander activity, with salamanders exhibiting increased movement, cover-object use, and co-occurrence under cover objects with earthworms as the study progressed. Unnecessary movement has the potential to incur fitness costs to salamanders in the form of energetic expenditure and increased exposure to predators.
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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".