Maternal and larval niche construction interact to shape development, survival, and population divergence in the dung beetle<i>Onthophagus taurus</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Through niche construction, organisms modify their environments in ways that can alter how selection acts on themselves and their offspring. However, the role of niche construction in shaping developmental and evolutionary trajectories, and its importance for population divergences and local adaptation, remains largely unclear. In this study, we manipulated both maternal and larval niche construction and measured the effects on fitness-relevant traits in two rapidly diverging populations of the bull-headed dung beetle, Onthophagus taurus. We find that both types of niche construction enhance adult size, peak larval mass, and pupal mass, which when compromised lead to a synergistic decrease in survival. Furthermore, for one measure, duration of larval development, we find that the two populations have diverged in their reliance on niche construction: larval niche construction appears to buffer against compromised maternal niche construction only in beetles from Western Australia, but not in beetles from the Eastern United States. We discuss our results in the context of rapid adaptation to novel conditions and the role of niche construction therein.
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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".