Predator density and timing of arrival affect reef fish community assembly
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Most empirical studies of predation use simple experimental approaches to quantify the effects of predators on prey (e.g., using constant densities of predators, such as ambient vs. zero). However, predator densities vary in time, and these effects may not be well represented by studies that use constant predator densities. Although studies have independently examined the importance of predator density, temporal variability, and timing of arrival (i.e., early or late relative to prey), the relative contribution of these different predator regimes on prey abundance, diversity, and composition remains poorly understood. The hawkfish (Paracirrhites arcatus), a carnivorous coral reef fish, exhibits substantial variability in patch occupancy, density, and timing of arrival to natural reefs. Our field experiments demonstrated that effects of hawkfish on prey abundance depended on both hawkfish density and the timing of their arrival, but not on variability in hawkfish density. Relative to treatments without hawkfish, hawkfish presence reduced prey abundance by 50%. This effect increased with a doubling of hawkfish density (an additional 33% reduction), and when hawkfish arrived later during community development (a 34% reduction). Hawkfish did not affect within-patch diversity (species richness), but they increased between-patch diversity (beta) based on species incidence (22%), and caused shifts in species composition. Our results suggest that the timing of predator arrival can be as important as predator density in modifying prey abundance and community composition.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| 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 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".