Effects of migratory geese on plant communities of an Alaskan salt marsh
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Summary We studied the effects of lesser snow geese (Anser caerulescens caerulescens) and Canada geese (Branta canadensis) on two salt marsh plant communities in Cook Inlet, Alaska, a stopover area used during spring migration. From 1995 to 1997 we compared plant species composition and biomass on plots where geese were excluded from feeding with paired plots where foraging could occur. Foraging intensity was low (650–1930 goose‐days km−2) compared to other goose‐grazing systems. Canada geese fed mainly on above‐ground shoots ofTriglochin maritimum, Puccinelliaspp. andCarex ramenskii, whereas the majority of the snow goose diet consisted of below‐ground tissues ofPlantago maritimaandTriglochin maritimum. Plant communities responded differently to goose herbivory. In the sedge meadow community, where feeding was primarily on above‐ground shoots, there was no effect of grazing on the dominant speciesCarex ramenskiiandTriglochin maritimum. In the herb meadow community, where snow geese fed onPlantago maritimaroots and other below‐ground tissues, there was a difference in the relative abundance of plant species between treatments. Biomass ofPlantago maritimaandPotentilla egediiwas lower on grazed plots compared with exclosed, whereas biomass ofCarex ramenskiiwas greater on grazed plots. There was no effect of herbivory on total standing crop biomass in either community. The variable effect of herbivory onCarex ramenskiibetween communities suggests that plant neighbours and competitive interactions are important factors in a species’ response to herbivory. In addition, the type of herbivory (above‐ or below‐ground) was important in determining plant community response to herbivory. Litter accumulation was reduced in grazed areas compared with exclosed in both communities. Trampling of the previous year’s litter into the soil surface by geese incorporated more litter into soils in grazed areas. This study illustrates that even light herbivore pressure can alter plant communities and affect forage availability.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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".