Ground-Nesting Ant Assemblages and Their Relationships to Habitat Factors Along a Chronosequence of Postfire-Regenerated Lichen–Spruce Woodland
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Ground-nest densities and nesting habits of 13 ant species were quantified in five postfire age classes (1, 9, 23, 47, and 79 yr old) in the lichen–spruce woodland of Quebec, Canada. There were no significant differences in ant nest densities between age-classes (average of 163 nests/ha), but there were significant differences in ant community structure. Ant communities were dominated by Formica podzolica, F. aserva, F. hewetti, and Myrmica detritinodis, which accounted for 77% of occupied nests. Some species (e.g., F. podzolica) were specialists in their nesting habits, whereas others (e.g., F. aserva) were generalists and built their nest in a variety of substrates. Nest densities of F. aserva correlated with several habitat factors, but these correlations could have been spurious because they were not related to this species’ nesting habits. However, significant positive correlations found between Camponotus herculeanus and Leptothorax canadensis and coarse woody debris (CWD) may be biologically significant, because these two species nested exclusively within CWD. Nest densities of M. detritinodis and M. fracticornis were relatively high in the youngest and the oldest age classes, resulting in a negative correlation with CWD. We suggest that the distribution of these two species is caused by their preference for older forests to a high rate of fire survival and possibly to competitive release in the year after disturbance. According to canonical correspondence analysis, at least 75% of the variation in ant species cannot be explained by the habitat factors measured. Future research should include, therefore, experimental manipulations to determine the extent to which other factors, such as interspecific interactions, may structure ant communities in lichen–spruce woodland.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 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 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".