The role of feeding strategy in the tolerance of a terrestrial salamander (<i>Plethodon cinereus</i>) to biogeochemical changes in northern hardwood forests
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We investigated whether the trophic ecology of an apex predator is influenced by ecosystem-level nutrient depletion. The feeding behavior and nutrient assimilation of a terrestrial salamander, Eastern Red-backed Salamander (Plethodon cinereus (Green, 1818)), was surveyed along a gradient of forest biogeochemistry. Recent studies have documented populations of these salamanders in forests with low-pH soils that were long thought to be fatal. One mechanism that may enable P. cinereus to tolerate acid-impaired habitats is its generalist life history. We sampled diet, invertebrate prey abundance, and tissue composition of P. cinereus from sites that range in calcium availability and soil pH in northern forests of North America. We found that P. cinereus consistently exhibited a generalist feeding strategy, having diverse diets closely representing resource availability. Prey abundances were unrelated to the biogeochemical gradient (excluding gastropods), indicating relatively intact food webs. Although P. cinereus at the two most acid-impaired sites consumed more prey, overall trophic strategies were consistent across the gradient. Salamander tissue composition was unrelated to variation in forest biogeochemistry, although manganese levels were elevated in the most acid-impaired forests. We suggest that a generalist feeding strategy, combined with diverse and compositionally stable food webs, facilitates tolerance by this abundant predator of the challenges imposed by acid-impaired habitats.
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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".