Predation risk induces age- and sex-specific morphological plastic responses in the fathead minnow Pimephales promelas
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Although comprehending the significance of phenotypic plasticity for evolution is of major interest in biology, the pre-requirement for that, the understanding of variance in plasticity, is still in its infancy. Most researchers assess plastic traits at single developmental stages and pool results between sexes. Here, we study variation among sexes and developmental stages in inducible morphological defences, a well-known instance of plasticity. We raised fathead minnows, Pimephales promelas, under different levels of background predation risk (conspecific alarm cues or distilled water) in a split-clutch design and studied morphology in both juveniles and adults. In accordance with the theory that plasticity varies across ontogeny and sexes, geometric morphometry analyses revealed significant shape differences between treatments that varied across developmental stages and sexes. Alarm cue-exposed juveniles and adult males developed deeper heads, deeper bodies, longer dorsal fin bases, shorter caudal peduncles and shorter caudal fins. Adult alarm cue-exposed males additionally developed a larger relative eye size. These responses represent putative adaptive plasticity as they are linked to reduced predation risk. Perhaps most surprisingly, we found no evidence for inducible morphological defences in females. Understanding whether similar variation occurs in other taxa and their environments is crucial for modelling evolution.
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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".