Water clarity, maternal behavior, and physiology combine to eliminate UV radiation risk to amphibians in a montane landscape
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Increasing UV-B radiation (UV-B; 290-320 nm) due to stratospheric ozone depletion has been a leading explanation for the decline in amphibians for nearly 2 decades. Yet, the likelihood that UV-B can influence amphibians at the large spatial scales relevant to population declines has not yet been evaluated. A key limitation has been in relating results from individual sites to the effect of UV-B for populations distributed across heterogeneous landscapes. We measured critical embryonic exposures to UV-B for two species of montane amphibians with contrasting physiological sensitivities, long-toed salamander (Ambystoma macrodactylum) and Cascades frog (Rana cascadae), at field sites spanning a gradient of UV-B attenuation in water. We then used these experimental results to estimate the proportion of embryos exposed to harmful UV-B across a large number of breeding sites. By combining surveys of the incubation timing, incident UV-B, optical transparency of water, and oviposition depth and light exposure of embryos at each site, we present a comprehensive assessment of the risk posed by UV-B for montane amphibians of the Pacific Northwest. We found that only 1.1% of A. macrodactylum and no R. cascadae embryos across a landscape of breeding sites are exposed to UV-B exceeding lethal levels. These results emphasize that accurately estimating the risk posed by environmental stressors requires placing experimental results in a broader ecological context that accounts for the heterogeneity experienced by populations distributed across natural landscapes.
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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 | 0.000 | 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".