Suburbanization alters small pond ecosystems: shifts in nitrogen and food web dynamics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Small ponds often survive the transition from forested to suburban land cover and provide habitat for many species, yet little is known about how suburbanization affects pond ecosystems. We surveyed 18 small ponds across a forest-to-suburban land cover gradient and compared how physical and chemical changes altered biological and ecosystem properties, such as nutrient and food web dynamics. Suburbanization decreased canopy cover, increased water temperatures, and increased periphyton chlorophyll a, but was associated with only weak increases in total nutrients. Yet, stable isotope analysis indicated that suburbanization altered nitrogen dynamics and resource use in the food web. We observed increases in δ 15 N in algae, biofilm, and frog larvae across the suburban gradient, indicative of wastewater intrusion. Suburbanization also shifted the energy and nutrient source of a dominant consumer (Rana sylvatica; = Lithobates sylvaticus) from leaf litter to algae. Overall, we identified cryptic changes to suburban pond ecosystems, highlighting that suburbanization can profoundly impact nutrients and food web resources. As residential land use increases globally, we may expect substantial shifts in nutrient dynamics and food web pathways.
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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 | 0.001 | 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".