Role of Astrophorina sponges (Demospongiae) in food-web interactions at the Flemish Cap (NW Atlantic)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Deep-sea sponges are important contributors to carbon and nitrogen cycling due to their large filtration capacity. Species of the suborder Astrophorina form dense sponge grounds in the North Atlantic, where they serve as prey for spongivores, but also have non-trophic interactions with commensal epi- and endobionts. At the Flemish Cap (NW Atlantic), Astrophorina sponges are present in 4 previously described deep-sea epifaunal assemblages: the deep-sea coral assemblage, lower slope assemblages 1 and 2, and the deep-sea sponge assemblage. To investigate their role in trophic and non-trophic interactions at the Flemish Cap, we developed trophic and non-trophic interaction web models for each of the 4 faunal assemblages using the published literature. By excluding the sponges from the models, we estimated how many trophic, and facultative and obligatory non-trophic, interactions would be lost, and how this removal affected food-web properties (number of compartments, links, link density, and connectance). Astrophorina sponges were mostly linked via facultative non-trophic interactions to 59, 58, 84, and 90 compartments in the deep-sea coral, the lower slope 1 and 2, and the deep-sea sponge assemblages, respectively. Direct trophic interactions only existed with Syllidae, Echinasteridae, and Pterasteridae. Astrophorina sponges were considered highest impact taxa in all faunal assemblages and, together with sea pens, they were identified as structural species/habitat formers and foundation species in the deep-sea coral and deep-sea sponge habitat. Hence, even less abundant, or non-representative (indicator), species can be important for food-web integrity via trophic and non-trophic interactions.
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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 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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".