The effect of gopher mounds and fire on the spatial distribution and demography of a short-lived legume in tallgrass prairie
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Many studies have reported that gopher mounds can increase species diversity and spatial heterogeneity of plant communities, but few studies have experimentally linked these small-scale disturbances to spatial heterogeneity in the distribution of individual plant populations. In this study, we directly tested for a spatial relationship between the pattern of gopher mound production and the distribution of a short-lived legume, Medicago lupulina L., across a tallgrass prairie remnant. In addition, we conducted a 3-year study examining the demographic response of M. lupulina to mound and off-mound planting treatments, during which a spring fire occurred one year. We found that the spatial distribution of M. lupulina was positively correlated with the distribution of mounds. Germination was significantly greater off mounds in all years, while survivorship and fecundity were significantly greater on mounds in the 2 years without fire. During the fire year, survivorship was significantly greater off mounds and fecundity was approximately equal on and off mounds. We conclude that the positive spatial relationship between M. lupulina and mounds is caused by the direct dependence of M. lupulina on mounds for survivorship in most years. Gopher mounds provide microsites where plant competition and risk of herbivory are reduced. Overall, gopher mounds can directly produce spatial heterogeneity in the plant community, but the strength of this effect may be significantly modified in some years, particularly those in which a spring fire occurs.Key words: gopher mounds, fire, Medicago lupulina, disturbance, prairie, introduced species.
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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) | 0.000 | 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 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".