Competition does not come at the expense of colonization in seed morphs with increased size and dispersal
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PREMISE OF THE STUDY: Seed-level trade-offs of heterocarpic species remain poorly understood. We propose that seedlings emerging from seeds with a permanent pappus (dispersing seeds) are stronger competitors than those emerging from seeds without a pappus (nondispersing seeds) because dispersing seeds are larger and germinate faster than nondispersing seeds in Centaurea solstitialis. METHODS: We conducted a competition experiment with both seed morphs, in which we recorded emergence rate and proportion, estimated seed dispersal by wind (anemochory) and by mammals (exozoochory), and measured size and abundance of seed morphs. KEY RESULTS: We found that seedlings from pappus seeds had greater competitive abilities than those from non-pappus seeds. Similarly, pappus seedlings emerged at much faster rates and larger proportions than non-pappus seedlings. Pappus seeds were larger, were more numerous, and displayed improved exozoochory compared to non-pappus seeds. Anemochory was poor for both seed morphs. CONCLUSIONS: We found support for our hypothesis, raising in turn the possibility that competition and colonization are positively associated in seed morphs of heterocarpic species with enhanced exozoochory of larger seeds. These findings are not consistent with those from heterocarpic species with enhanced anemochory of smaller seeds or slower-germinating seeds. Our results additionally suggest that pappus and non-pappus seeds of C. solstitialis display a task-division strategy in which pappus morphs colonize and preempt unoccupied sites through improved dispersal and fast and large emergence of seedlings with increased competitive abilities, whereas non-pappus morphs promote site persistence through delayed germination and dormancy. This strategy may contribute to the success of C. solstitialis in highly variable environments.
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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 | 0.002 |
| 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".