Polymorphic buttonwood: effects of disturbance on resistance to herbivores in green and silver morphs of a Bahamian shrub
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We studied consequences of storm damage on buttonwood (Conocarpus erectus) shrubs and their herbivores in the Bahamian islands. Buttonwood is polymorphic, with green shrubs producing few leaf trichomes and silver shrubs covered in dense trichomes. We first characterize traits of green vs. silver shrubs relevant for herbivores, and then assay damage by two prominent insects. Next, on replicated islands, we experimentally address how different types of storm damage (simulated hurricane surge damage vs. simulated intense wind) affected phenotypic traits of both buttonwood morphs and subsequent herbivory over a one-year sampling period. Our results show that although leaves produced by green shrubs are 21% tougher than leaves produced by silver shrubs, green leaves have 16% higher nitrogen concentrations and greater levels of herbivory. Consistent with previous observational studies of a natural hurricane at our study site, we found stronger effects of simulated surge damage than simulated wind damage. Experimental pruning of shrubs resulted in reduced toughness, higher nitrogen concentration, fewer trichomes, and greater herbivory compared to controls and compared to shrubs with their leaves stripped. The results were stronger for the silver compared to the green morph. Morph differences in buttonwood have strong consequences for herbivores, and these effects are modified by disturbance.
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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 | 0.001 |
| 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".