Nutritional value and diet preference of arboreal lichens and hypogeous fungi for small mammals in the Rocky Mountains
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Many small mammals consume lichen and fungi, but southern red-backed voles ( Clethrionomys gapperi (Vigors, 1830)) and northern flying squirrels ( Glaucomys sabrinus (Shaw, 1801)) exhibit strong mycophagy compared with other North American taxa. We analyzed nutrient content of lichen and fungi and observed feeding preferences of voles and flying squirrels to understand the foraging behavior of these mammals and their strategy for surviving on relatively low-quality diets dominated by lichen and fungi. We analyzed nutrient characteristics of 10 hypogeous (fruiting belowground) fungi and four arboreal lichens eaten by red-backed voles and northern flying squirrels in the Rocky Mountains. Hypogeous fungi contained higher nitrogen, lipid, neutral detergent fiber, acid detergent fiber, ash, potassium, and phosphorous concentrations than arboreal lichens, but lichens were higher in calcium. To assess diet preferences, 10 pairwise feeding trials using four hypogeous fungi and two arboreal lichens were conducted with voles and seven trials using three hypogeous fungi and two lichens were conducted with squirrels. In general, squirrels and voles preferred hypogeous fungi over arboreal lichens. We then calculated dry matter and nitrogen digestibilities for flying squirrels and red-backed voles fed diets of arboreal lichen and hypogeous fungi. Overall mean dry matter digestibilities were ≥70% for all diets. For hypogeous fungi, nitrogen digestibility was 12.3% and 24.9% for squirrels and voles, respectively, suggesting that most nitrogen was indigestible. Animals maintained positive nitrogen balance when fed fungi but were unable to maintain positive nitrogen balance when fed lichens. Maintenance nitrogen requirements for flying squirrels were lower than predicted. Low requirements may allow for increased consumption of lichen in winter, but lichen diets must be supplemented with a source of nitrogen because animals were unable to maintain nitrogen balance when fed lichen alone. Consumption of numerous fungi and lichen taxa is necessary to sustain these animals year-round.
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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".