The effects of urbanization on ant assemblages (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) associated with the Molson Nature Reserve, Quebec
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Urbanization causes the fragmentation of natural habitats into isolated patches surrounded by anthropogenic habitats. Fragment size and the intensity of human disturbance have been shown to affect both composition and diversity of arthropod communities, but most groups have been understudied. We investigated effects of urbanization on ant assemblages (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in and around the Molson Reserve, a preserved maple-beech forest surrounded by residential properties near Montréal, Quebec. We studied how local ant assemblages differed in terms of composition, abundance, and species richness, depending on whether they were situated in the interior forest, in adjacent residential backyards, or at the edge between these two habitats. We also compared an intact forest interior with a younger and moderately disturbed forest (“buffer zone”) between the urban matrix and the interior forest. Few differences were detected between the buffer zone and the intact forest interior. Extrapolated estimates of species richness suggest that it is lowest in the forest interior and highest in urban zones. Community composition, as investigated with ordination analysis, revealed a clear difference between the fauna of urban sites and the fauna of edges and forest interiors, and analyzing the relative abundance of ants showed residential backyards to contain the most ants. Urban assemblages were characterized by several competitively dominant species, including one introduced or “tramp” species. The occurrence of aggressive and dominant species in urban sites and at the edges of the Molson Reserve could potentially interfere with the dispersal and immigration of ground-dwelling arthropods and negatively affect local diversity or community composition in isolated forest reserves in urban centres.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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".