Detecting danger from prey-guild members: behavioural and metabolic responses of Ozark zigzag salamanders to alarm secretions from earthworms
Bibliographic record
Abstract
When different species have common predators, selection should favor individuals that respond to alarm cues from the other species. The Ozark zigzag salamander (Plethodon angusticlavius) occupies microhabitats under rocks and logs during wet conditions, and uses subterranean burrows during harsh environmental periods. Using the vomeronasal organ, these salamanders can assess chemical cues in their environment, including cues from predators and alarm secretions from conspecific and heterospecific salamanders. Ozark zigzag salamanders live syntopically with earthworms which are abundant and vulnerable to the same predators. We tested whether salamanders would respond to alarm secretion from earthworms in ways that are consistent with antipredator behaviour. We obtained alarm secretions from earthworms by simulating a predator attack (grasping them with forceps) and collecting the stimuli in water. When exposed to alarm secretions, salamanders increased their time spent in escape behaviour, decreased their chemosensory behaviour, and increased oxygen consumption, whereas their responses to stimuli from unstressed earthworms were similar to their responses to blank water. Our results suggest that Ozark zigzag salamanders recognize alarm secretions from earthworms as dangerous because of their ecological similarity.
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".