Habitat Fingerprints for Lake Superior Coastal Wetlands Derived from Elemental Analysis of Yellow Perch Otoliths
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Assessing the ecological importance of coastal habitats to Great Lakes ecosystems requires an understanding of the ecological linkages between coastal and offshore waters. Elemental analysis of fish otoliths has emerged as a powerful technique that can provide a natural tag for determining nursery area affiliation, population structure, and movement of individual fish. Since the elemental composition of fish otoliths reflects some of the environmental conditions under which a fish was reared, otolith chemistry can record differences in ambient water conditions specific to habitats used during a fish's life history. Although few studies have been conducted in freshwaters, trace element analysis of marine fish otoliths has proven useful in identifying the chemical signatures unique to particular spawning and nursery habitats. To examine the utility of this method in freshwater, sagittae were removed from 275 young‐of‐the‐year yellow perch Perca flavescens captured from eight wetlands in western Lake Superior during August 2001. They were analyzed for Ca and 13 minor and trace elements using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICPMS) and inductively coupled atomic emission mass spectrometry (ICPAES). Otolith concentrations of Ba, K, Mg, Mn, Na, and Sr differed significantly among wetlands (ANOVA, P < 0.001). Interwetland differences were also pronounced when analyzed as a multivariate fingerprint (MANOVA, P < 0.001). Discriminant function analysis revealed relatively distinct chemical fingerprints associated with each wetland. Wetland classification accuracy based on a five‐element model (Sr, Mn, K, Ba, and Mg) ranged from 62% to 100% and averaged 76%. Differences in fingerprints between wetland types (river‐influenced versus lagoon) were also distinct (MANOVA, P < 0.001). Classification accuracy for wetland type was 81% based on a five‐element model that included Ba, Mg, Mn, Na, and Sr. Our results suggest that otolith elemental fingerprints may be useful for quantifying the relative contributions of different wetland nursery areas to recruitment in adjacent lake populations.
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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 | 0.001 | 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".