Relationship Between Methylmercury Contamination and Proportion of Aquatic and Terrestrial Prey in Diets of Shoreline Spiders
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Terrestrial organisms such as shoreline spiders that consume prey from aquatic food webs can be contaminated with methylmercury (MeHg). However, no studies have examined the relationship between MeHg contamination of shoreline spider taxa and the proportion of aquatic and terrestrial prey in their diets. The present study had 2 objectives: 1) determine concentrations of MeHg in 7 taxa of shoreline spiders, and 2) assess the relationship between concentrations of MeHg in spiders and the proportion of aquatic and terrestrial prey in spider diets. We collected shoreline spiders, emergent aquatic insects, and terrestrial insects from in and around 10 experimental ponds. Methylmercury concentrations were greatest in spiders, intermediate in aquatic insects, and lowest in terrestrial insects. The elevated MeHg concentrations in spiders indicate that they were feeding, at least in part, on emergent aquatic insects. However, variability in MeHg concentration observed among spider taxa suggested that the proportion of aquatic and terrestrial prey in spider diets likely varied among taxa. We estimated the proportion of aquatic and terrestrial prey in the diet of each spider taxon from the nitrogen (δ15N) and carbon (δ13C) isotope values of spiders and their potential aquatic and terrestrial prey items. The median proportion of aquatic prey in spider diets varied by almost 2-fold, and MeHg concentrations in shoreline spiders were strongly correlated with the proportion of aquatic prey in their diet. In the present study, we demonstrate for the first time that the degree of connectivity to aquatic food webs determines MeHg contamination of shoreline spiders. Environ Toxicol Chem 2019;38:2503–2508. © 2019 SETAC Abstract The concentration of MeHg in spider taxa increased as a function of the proportion of aquatic prey in their diet, demonstrating for the first time that the degree of connectivity to aquatic food webs determines MeHg contamination of shoreline spiders.
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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 | 0.001 | 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".