DISTRIBUTION OF ALGAL EPIPHYTES ACROSS ENVIRONMENTAL GRADIENTS AT DIFFERENT SCALES: INTERTIDAL ELEVATION, HOST CANOPIES, AND HOST FRONDS<sup>1</sup>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Understanding epiphyte distribution in coastal communities is important because these organisms affect many others directly or indirectly. Yet, their distribution has been considerably less studied than that of their hosts and other primary-space holders. Identifying major sources of variation in epiphyte abundance is thus still a need. Environmental gradients help predict species distribution and are pervasive on marine shores. In this study, we test the notion that environmental gradients across intertidal elevation, throughout host canopies, and along host fronds explain a large variation in the abundance of sympatric epiphytes. Our model system was the assemblage of Ascophyllum nodosum (L.) Le Jol. and its epiphytes Vertebrata lanosa (L.) T. A. Chr. [= Polysiphonia lanosa (L.) Tandy], Elachista fucicola (Velley) Aresch., and Pylaiella littoralis (L.) Kjellm. On the coast of Nova Scotia (Canada), we found evidence of a spatial segregation among these species at almost all scales. While the red epiphyte V. lanosa was more common at high- and midintertidal elevations (peaking at midelevations) and on middle segments of host fronds, the brown epiphytes E. fucicola and P. littoralis were more common at low elevations and restricted to distal segments of host fronds. Canopy habitat affected abundance only for V. lanosa, which was more common within the host canopy than on its periphery at midelevations. Since the studied gradients are related to predictable changes in abiotic factors, the identification of likely causes behind the observed patterns was facilitated. Our study ends by proposing abiotic and biotic factors that deserve priority in the experimental testing of the forces structuring this assemblage.
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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 | 0.000 |
| 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 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".