Chemical communication in wood frog (Rana sylvatica) tadpoles is influenced by early-life exposure to naphthenic acid fraction compounds
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Environmental pollutants can disrupt chemical communication between aquatic organisms by interfering with the production, transmission, and/or detection of, as well as responses to, chemical cues. Here, we test the hypothesis that early-life exposure to naphthenic acid fraction compounds (NAFCs) from oil sands tailings disrupts antipredator-associated chemical communication in larval amphibians. Wild adult wood frogs (Rana sylvatica) captured during their natural breeding period were combined (1 female:2 males) in six replicate mesocosms filled with either uncontaminated lakewater or with NAFCs isolated from an active tailings pond in Alberta, Canada, at nominal 5 mg/L concentrations. Egg clutches were incubated and tadpoles maintained in their respective mesocosms for ∼40 days post-hatch. Tadpoles (Gosner stage 25-31) were then transferred individually to trial arenas filled with uncontaminated water and exposed to one of six chemical alarm cue (AC) stimuli solutions following a 3 × 2 × 2 design (3 AC types × 2 stimulus carriers × 2 rearing exposure groups). Relative to control tadpoles, NAFC-exposed tadpoles demonstrated higher baseline activity levels (line crosses and direction changes) when introduced to uncontaminated water. Antipredator responses differed in graded fashion with AC type, with control ACs eliciting the greatest latency to resume activity, water the least, and NAFC-exposed ACs intermediate. Pre- to post-stimulus difference scores were non-significant in control tadpoles, while NAFC-exposed tadpoles demonstrated significantly greater variation. While this suggests that exposure to NAFCs from fertilization through hatching may have interfered with AC production, it is unclear whether the quality or quantity of cues was affected. There was also no clear evidence that NAFC carrier water interfered with ACs or the alarm response in unexposed control tadpoles. These results emphasize the importance of understanding how behavioral and physiological effects of early-life NAFC exposure on critical antipredator responses may persist across life history stages.
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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 | 0.000 |
| 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 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".