Large trees and decay: Suppliers of a keystone resource for cavity‐using wildlife in old‐growth and secondary Andean temperate forests
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Tree cavities are a keystone resource for many wildlife species worldwide. In Andean temperate forests of South America, many species of birds, mammals and reptiles use cavities to achieve their life history requirements. However, information on cavity supply and drivers of cavity production in these forests remains largely undocumented. We examined the patterns of tree‐cavity supply in successional native forests, exploring the potential drivers of cavity occurrence and relative abundances in Andean temperate ecosystems of southern Chile. In 10 forest stands, we established 369 vegetation plots and measured 7951 trees. For each tree, we recorded the species and measured the diameter at breast height (DBH), decay class and number of cavities. While tree density was much higher in secondary than in old‐growth forest stands, the density of nonexcavated cavities was higher in old‐growth than in secondary forests. Cavity occurrence and relative abundances (number of cavities per tree) were higher in large decaying and standing dead trees (i.e. habitat legacies) than in young healthy trees. Importantly, DBH and decay had a stronger influence on the supply of nonexcavated than excavated cavities. Our results highlight the importance of old‐growth forest stands, tree decay processes and habitat legacies for securing a continuous supply of a keystone habitat resource for tree cavity‐using wildlife in a global biodiversity hotspot of South America. Abstract in Spanish is available with online material.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".