Ecology of an Improbable Association: The Pseudomyrmecine Plant‐ant<i>Tetraponera tessmanni</i>and the Myrmecophytic Liana<i>Vitex thyrsiflora</i>(Lamiaceae) in Cameroon<sup>1</sup>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT In young individuals of the obligate myrmecophytic lianaVitex thyrsiflora, several species of ants and other arthropods compete for resources offered by the plant. In mature individuals, the only inhabitant is the ant speciesTetraponera tessmanni, which is completely restricted toVitexlianas as its sole host. Established colonies of this ant provide effective defense against herbivores. The association betweenV. thyrsifloraandT. tessmanniis unusual in two respects. First, the climbing life form is rare among myrmecophytes. Secondly, it is surprising that a pseudomyrmecine should be the obligate associate of a liana. Pseudomyrmecine plant‐ants often prune vegetation contacting their host plant. This behavior functions in part to protect against invasion of the host by ecologically dominant ants. In contrast,T. tessmannidoes not prune and is associated with a plant whose success, and thus that of its resident ant colony, depends on contacts with many other plants. Several traits ofV. thyrsifloraandT. tessmannicombine to make the colonization of host plants by potential competitors very difficult. These include behavioral and morphological filters restricting entrance into the plant and exploitation of the resources it can supply; plant anatomical organization that enablesT. tessmanniworkers to carry out all activities, except leaf patrolling, within a single, branched private nesting space within which all food resources offered by the plant are produced; and polygyny, permitting the colony to monopolize a large, rapidly growing and long‐lived territory.
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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 | 0.001 | 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) | 0.002 | 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".