Benthic food web structure of a highly stratified sub-Arctic archipelago on the Newfoundland Shelf (Northwest Atlantic Ocean)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Arctic and sub-Arctic marine ecosystems are experiencing some of the highest sea surface warming in the world, which has intensified water column stratification and subsequently reduced phytoplankton production and particulate organic matter quality. However, the effects of these changes on benthic food webs and the transfer of organic matter to higher trophic levels are still poorly understood. This study examines the spatial and temporal variability of food web structure in a sub-Arctic benthic community exposed to contrasting thermal stratification conditions. The study hypothesizes that during stratified periods, oceanographic conditions would have a limited effect on benthic invertebrates located above/at the thermocline due to their direct access to surface/subsurface primary production. On the other hand, organisms below the thermocline may be more sensitive to increased stratification because they do not have direct access to these food resources. To test this hypothesis, we sampled benthic invertebrates and several fish species on the Newfoundland Shelf along a cross-shore transect (2 shallow stations versus 2 deep stations above and below the thermocline, respectively) over two seasons. We used isotopic analyses (δ 13 C and δ 15 N) to study the structure of the food web and the transfer of organic matter. No temporal variation and little spatial variability in food web structure was observed, resulting in a 73.2% overlap between isotopic niches of shallow and deep stations. At all stations, most primary consumers were characterized by high trophic plasticity, feeding on both phytoplankton and benthic organic matter (mean dependence on benthic sources = 46.7%). In the context of global warming and increased thermal stratification, we hypothesize that benthic primary production may be less vulnerable to nutrient depletion than phytoplankton. We suggest that an increased contribution of benthic primary producers to organic matter fluxes in shallow coastal food webs could significantly enhance the resilience of the benthic food web to stratification intensification. • Benthic food web structure has changed little over time and space • Benthic herbivores showed high trophic plasticity, feeding on diverse carbon sources • This flexibility may help them adapt to changes in resource availability • Benthic primary producers may be less sensitive to nutrient depletion than phytoplankton • Benthic primary producers may enhance the resilience of benthic food webs in the face of ongoing climate change and increased thermal stratification.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 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 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".