Instream C sources for primary consumers in two temperate, oligotrophic rivers: possible evidence of bryophytes as a food source
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Aquatic food webs use C derived from 2 sources: autochthonous (derived from inside the water body) and allochthonous (derived from outside the water body). Various autochthonous sources are available to consumers (e.g., algae, mosses, macrophytes), and stable isotope analysis can be used to differentiate among C sources and to determine which sources sustain aquatic communities. The goal of our study was to determine which C sources contribute to the autochthonous pathways in 2 oligotrophic rivers, the Upper Salmon and Big Salmon, in New Brunswick (Canada). Samples were taken from headwaters to river mouth (above head of tide) at 17 study sites distributed across subbasins and stream orders. Vegetation samples included macrophytes, filamentous algae, biofilm, and aquatic bryophytes. Macroinvertebrate taxa in the scraper (grazer) functional feeding group were collected to represent primary consumers that feed primarily on autochthonous food sources. Macrophyte and cyanobacteria δ13C values were correlated with scraper δ13C values (r = 0.55 and 0.47, respectively), but δ13C of most scrapers was more depleted than δ13C of these food sources (>40% and >90%, respectively). Trophic fractionation is primarily an enrichment process, so these results indicated that macrophytes and cyanobacteria were not important food sources for primary consumers. Filamentous algae and biofilm δ13C values were poorly correlated with scraper δ13C values (r = 0.36 and 0.40, respectively), and >60% of the values were too depleted for these sources to be important food sources for scrapers. Ninety-eight percent of scraper δ13C values were enriched relative to bryophyte δ13C values, and bryophyte δ13C values were correlated with scraper δ13C values (r = 0.53), particularly when samples from slow-flowing habitats were removed from the analysis (r = 0.76). Spatial distributions of 2 important bryophyte taxa differed. Fontinalis sp. was abundant in headwater streams, and Drepanocladus sp. was abundant in low-order streams. Scrapers in low-order streams seemed to depend more on Fontinalis sp. than scrapers in high-order streams depended on Drepanocladus sp. Our results suggest that in low-productivity, nutrient-limited rivers, reduced availability of more preferred food sources (e.g., epilithic algae) might cause primary consumers to switch to marginal food sources, such as bryophytes. Further research is required to confirm this hypothesis and to eliminate confounding factors.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| 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".