Comparative feeding behaviour of native and introduced terrestrial snails tracks their ecological impacts
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A developing body of theory and empirical evidence suggest that feeding behaviour as measured by the functional response (FR) can assist researchers in assessing the relative potential, ecological impacts and competitive abilities of native and introduced species. Here, we explored the FRs of two land snails that occur in south-western Ontario, one native (Mesodonthyroidus) and one non-indigenous (Cepaeanemoralis) to Canada. The non-indigenous species appears to have low ecological impact and inferior competitive abilities. Consistent with theory, while both species conformed to Type II functional responses, the native species had a significantly higher attack rate (5.30 vs 0.41, respectively) and slightly lower handling time (0.020 vs 0.023), and hence a higher maximum feeding rate (50.0 vs 43.5). The non-indigenous species exhibited a significantly longer time to contact for a variety of food types, and appeared less discriminating of paper that was offered as a non-food type. The non-indigenous species also ate significantly less food when in mixed species trials with the native snail. These feeding patterns match the known low ecological impact of the introduced snail and are consistent with the view that it is an inferior competitor relative to the native species. However, field experimentation is required to clarify whether the largely microallopatric distributions of the two species in south-western Ontario reflect competitive dominance by the native species or other factors such as habitat preference, feeding preferences or predator avoidance. The relative patterns of feeding behaviour and ecological impact are, however, fully in line with recent functional response theory and application.
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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 | 0.000 | 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) | 0.001 | 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".