Influence of an Offshore Mussel Aquaculture Site on the Distribution of Epibenthic Macrofauna in Îles de la Madeleine, Eastern Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mussel farming influences benthic environments by organic loading and the addition of physical structure within aquaculture leases. This study evaluated near-field (distance to mussel aquaculture structures, line-scale) and bay-scale (inside vs. outside a blue mussel, Mytilius edulis , farm) effects of an offshore mussel farm in Îles de la Madeleine (Canada) on epibenthic macrofaunal communities. Benthic communities were evaluated by underwater visual counts using SCUBA in June and July 2014. The mussel farm influenced benthic communities at line- and bay-scales. Overall, crabs ( Cancer irroratus , Pagarus pubecsens, Pagarus acadianus ), sea stars ( Asterias rubens ), Northern moon snails ( Polinices heros ), and American lobsters ( Homarus americanus ) were more abundant in farm sites than outside of farm sites and ocean quahogs ( Arctica islandica ) were more abundant outside. No clear spatial trend was observed for winter flounder ( Pseudopleuronectes americanus ) and the sand dollar ( Echinarachnius parma ) but both species differed (flounder) or showed a trend to differ (sand dollar) between sampling dates. Spatial structure in the distribution of macrofauna was evident within the aquaculture lease as most species were more abundant directly below and close to mussel lines and anchor blocks. There was no spatial structure in non-farm sites. Further investigation is needed to evaluate if mussel farms serve as ecological traps for the species that congregate within them. The long-term effects of the observed spatial effects of offshore mussel culture on macrofauna fitness remains unknown.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".