Habitat-Mediated Variation in the Importance of Ecosystem Engineers for Secondary Cavity Nesters in a Nest Web
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Through physical state changes in biotic or abiotic materials, ecosystem engineers modulate resource availability to other organisms and are major drivers of evolutionary and ecological dynamics. Understanding whether and how ecosystem engineers are interchangeable for resource users in different habitats is a largely neglected topic in ecosystem engineering research that can improve our understanding of the structure of communities. We addressed this issue in a cavity-nest web (1999-2011). In aspen groves, the presence of mountain bluebird (Sialia currucoides) and tree swallow (Tachycineta bicolour) nests was positively related to the density of cavities supplied by northern flickers (Colaptes auratus), which provided the most abundant cavities (1.61 cavities/ha). Flickers in aspen groves provided numerous nesting cavities to bluebirds (66%) and swallows (46%), despite previous research showing that flicker cavities are avoided by swallows. In continuous mixed forests, however, the presence of nesting swallows was mainly related to cavity density of red-naped sapsuckers (Sphyrapicus nuchalis), which provided the most abundant cavities (0.52 cavities/ha), and to cavity density of hairy woodpeckers (Picoides villosus), which provided few (0.14 cavities/ha) but high-quality cavities. Overall, sapsuckers and hairy woodpeckers provided 86% of nesting cavities to swallows in continuous forests. In contrast, the presence of nesting bluebirds in continuous forests was associated with the density of cavities supplied by all the ecosystem engineers. These results suggest that (i) habitat type may mediate the associations between ecosystem engineers and resource users, and (ii) different ecosystem engineers may be interchangeable for resource users depending on the quantity and quality of resources that each engineer supplies in each habitat type. We, therefore, urge the incorporation of the variation in the quantity and quality of resources provided by ecosystem engineers across habitats into models that assess community dynamics to improve our understanding of the importance of ecosystem engineers in shaping ecological communities.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".