Macroalgal canopies reduce beta diversity in intertidal communities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Species diversity in a habitat is often termed alpha diversity. As it influences various community properties, many studies have investigated its drivers. For instance, intertidal macroalgal canopies limit understory thermal stress during low tides and thus often increase alpha diversity. More recently, beta diversity has also become of interest. Beta diversity measures the change in species composition across space and is another important attribute of communities because it influences their multifunctionality, productivity, and resilience. Using data from a field experiment done in Atlantic Canada, we tested the hypothesis that fucoid macroalgal canopies limit beta diversity in intertidal communities. This prediction stems from previous evidence that such canopies limit thermal variation across the substrate during low tides, an important consideration because spatial thermal changes influence spatial variability in species composition. To test our hypothesis, we compared two treatments (full canopy cover and canopy removal) created the year before on intertidal areas that were originally all fully covered by canopies. Separately for each treatment, we calculated beta diversity as the Bray-Curtis dissimilarity between nearby quadrats using species abundance data. Overall, fucoid macroalgal canopies significantly reduced beta diversity, showing that these foundation species can have opposing effects on alpha and beta diversity.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".