Distribution and behavior of ice worms (<i>Mesenchytraeus solifugus</i>) in south-central Alaska
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The ice worm, Mesenchytraeus solifugus ssp. rainierensis, is the only known annelid that survives in glacier ice. We report the locations of eight ice worm populations in south-central Alaska, including the northern- and western-most extent of known ice worm habitation. All ice worms identified in this study inhabit coastal glaciers proximal to the Gulf of Alaska. They were found in a variety of habitats including level snowfields, steep avalanche cones, crevasse walls, glacial rivers and pools, and hard glacier ice. Ice worms were not found on all coastal glaciers nor were they found in Alaska's interior (the Alaska Range). Ice worms on Byron Glacier, Alaska, totaled ~30 million and were distributed on seven distinct avalanche cones. They displayed a diurnal cycle, appearing on the glacier surface several hours before sunset and penetrating back into the glacier shortly after sunrise. Experiments suggest that ice worms preferentially penetrate the glacier beneath surface algae, Chlamydomonas nivalis, to a depth between 15 and 100 cm and resurface at a proximal location. Lateral movement of ice worms on the glacier surface can reach speeds of ~3 m/h. Ice worms on Byron Glacier avoided light, but did not respond preferentially to different wavelengths in the visible spectrum. Finally, ice worms displayed an unexpected attraction to heat.
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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 | 0.000 | 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 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".