Is dump material an effective small-scale deterrent to herbivory by leaf-cutting ants?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
It has been suggested that refuse dumps from leaf-cutting ant nests work as a herbivory deterrent for leaf-cutting ants because dumps harbour micro-organisms that are dangerous to ants and their symbiotic fungus. However, this deterrent effect was tested for the narrowly distributed Atta colombica only during a five-day period. We experimentally tested the refuse-deterrent effect for a longer period using the broadly distributed Acromyrmex lobicornis. Although refuse mounds around plants significantly delayed the initiation of attack by A. lobicornis, almost all plants (~90%), surrounded or not by refuse, were killed by leaf cutters in a few weeks. Therefore, the refuse-deterrent technique may not be useful as a widespread method of biological control for leaf-cutting ants. The refuse showed an improved deterrent effect when both the dump material and the leaf-cutting ant came from the same colony, suggesting that the pathogens for both ant and fungus found in refuse dumps might be nest-specific.
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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 | 0.000 |
| 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".