Know your foe: synanthropic spiders are deterred by semiochemicals of European fire ants
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Many ants prey on spiders, suggesting that web-building spiders may avoid micro-locations near ant colonies or frequented by foraging ants. Here we tested the hypothesis that ant-derived semiochemicals deter synanthropic spiders. To generate stimuli, we exposed filter paper for 12 h to workers of European fire ants,Myrmica rubra,black garden ants,Lasius niger,or western carpenter ants,Camponotus modoc, and then offered select urban spiders in three-chamber olfactometer bioassays a choice between ant-exposed filter paper and unexposed control filter paper. Semiochemical deposits ofM. rubra, but not ofL. nigerorC. modoc, had a significant deterrent effect on subadults of the false black widow,Steatoda grossa,the black widow,Latrodectus hesperus, and the hobo spider,Eratigena agrestis,as well as a moderate (but statistically not significant) deterrent effect on the cross spider,Araneus diadematus. The deterrent effect caused by semiochemical deposits ofM. rubramay be attributable to the aggressive nature and efficient foraging ofM. rubrain its invaded North American range, exerting selection pressure on community members to recognizeM. rubrasemiochemicals and to avoid micro-locations occupied byM. rubra.
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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 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".