Species-specific variation in larval survival and patterns of distribution for the blue mussels Mytilus edulis and Mytilus trossulus in the Gulf of Maine
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A broad zone of sympatry between two morphologically and ecologically similar blue mussels Mytilus trossulus (Gould) and M. edulis (L.) extends from the Canadian Maritimes into the Gulf of Maine. The zone boundary and the southern range limit of M. trossulus coincide with the position of the Eastern Maine Coastal Current (EMCC). This current has not been recognized as a biogeographic boundary. However, the flow field associated with the EMCC essentially divides the eastern and western Gulf during the part of year when mussel populations in the eastern portion of the Gulf are reproductively active and thus may be a hydrodynamic barrier to the westward dispersal of M. trossulus larvae. Alternatively, a strong gradient in water temperature associated with the EMCC may create a physiological barrier to M. trossulus larvae. We examined spatial variation in the abundance of M. trossulus and M. edulis along the coast of Maine using two diagnostic DNA-based markers. Although we detected M. trossulus in mussel populations in offshore locations in central Maine that were directly in the path of the EMCC, the abundance of this species declines dramatically at sites beyond the influence of this current. Variation in the abundance of adults, however, cannot differentiate between the effects of the EMCC on larval transport vs physiological tolerance. Thus, we also conducted a temperature challenge experiment investigating the species-specific variation in larval survival at temperatures ranging from 5°C to 20°C. We found that larval mortality was generally higher for M. trossulus relative to M. edulis larvae when exposed to 20°C early during development. These results suggest that differences in larval thermal tolerance help to structure the southern range limit for M. trossulus in the Gulf of Maine.
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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) | 0.000 | 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) | 0.000 | 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".