Disruption of an ant-plant mutualism shapes interactions between lions and their primary prey
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mutualisms often define ecosystems, but they are susceptible to human activities. Combining experiments, animal tracking, and mortality investigations, we show that the invasive big-headed ant ( Pheidole megacephala ) makes lions ( Panthera leo ) less effective at killing their primary prey, plains zebra ( Equus quagga ). Big-headed ants disrupted the mutualism between native ants ( Crematogaster spp.) and the dominant whistling-thorn tree ( Vachellia drepanolobium ), rendering trees vulnerable to elephant ( Loxodonta africana ) browsing and resulting in landscapes with higher visibility. Although zebra kills were significantly less likely to occur in higher-visibility, invaded areas, lion numbers did not decline since the onset of the invasion, likely because of prey-switching to African buffalo ( Syncerus caffer ). We show that by controlling biophysical structure across landscapes, a tiny invader reconfigured predator-prey dynamics among iconic 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 | 0.000 |
| 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".