Moss carpets constrain the fertilizing effects of herbivores on graminoid plants in arctic polygon fens
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We conducted a fertilization experiment in polygon fens that were grazed by Greater Snow Geese on Bylot Island (Canadian Arctic) to determine whether mosses can interfere with nutrient cycling and thereby prevent a direct fertilizing effect of herbivore faeces on vascular plants. We measured the effects of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and faecal addition on growth parameters and nutrient content of graminoids and mosses over a 2 year period. Growth and nutrient content of graminoids were enhanced only for high levels of N addition (5 g·m –2 per season), and showed little response to P addition. Although the growth of mosses showed a slight response to N or P addition, it is primarily nutrient content that was generally enhanced at all levels of fertilization. In many cases, stronger responses were detected when N and P were applied in combination, rather than singly. Addition of goose droppings had no effect on any measured parameters. Our results suggest that bryophytes act as a natural barrier by absorbing nutrients from external additions, thus blocking the access of highly assimilable nutrients to graminoid plant roots. At increased levels of N addition, bryophytes were apparently saturated so the nutrient surplus leached down to roots and was thus available for graminoid plant growth. The presence of a thick moss layer likely explains why the deposition of faeces by herbivores such as geese has no effect on graminoid growth in arctic polygon fens.
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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) | 0.000 | 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".