The effects of reduced pH on chemical alarm signalling in ostariophysan fishes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Under laboratory conditions, we examined the effects of acute exposure to weakly acidic conditions (pH 6.0) on the ability of fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas) and finescale dace (Phoxinus neogaeus) to detect and respond to conspecific and artificial alarm pheromones. Initially, minnows and dace exhibited normal antipredator responses when exposed to conspecific alarm pheromones under normal (pH 8.0) conditions. When retested at pH 6.0, we observed no significant antipredator response. However, when returned to normal pH conditions, both exhibited normal antipredator responses. Minnows exposed to the putative ostariophysan alarm pheromone (hypoxanthine-3-N-oxide) exhibited a similar trend in behavioural response. Finally, we manipulated the pH of minnow skin extract and hypoxanthine-3-N-oxide to determine the chemical mechanism responsible for this observed loss of response. Minnows exhibited significant antipredator responses to natural and artificial alarm pheromones at normal pH conditions, but did not respond to either stimulus once they had been buffered to pH 6.0 or acidified and rebuffered to pH 7.5. These data suggest that the ability of minnows and dace to detect and respond to alarm pheromones is impaired under weakly acidic conditions and that this loss of response is due to a nonreversible covalent change to the alarm pheromone molecule itself.
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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 | 0.000 |
| 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 | 0.001 |
| 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 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".