The non-indigenous dung beetle (<i>Onthophagus nuchicornis</i>) can effectively reproduce using the dung of indigenous eastern North American mammals
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Non-indigenous dung beetle (Coleoptera: Scarabaeoidea) species in North America are important contributors to ecosystem functions, particularly in pasture-based livestock systems. Despite the significant body of research surrounding non-indigenous (and often invasive) dung beetles in agricultural contexts, there has been minimal study concerning the impact that these species may have on indigenous dung beetle populations in natural environments. Here we examine the possible impact of the introduced dung beetle Onthophagus nuchicornis on indigenous dung beetle populations via use of indigenous mammal dung. Using a controlled laboratory experiment, we quantified how readily beetles could use dung from bobcat ( Lynx rufus ), red fox ( Vulpes vulpes ), moose ( Alces alces ), raccoon ( Procyon lotor ), and domestic sheep ( Ovis aries ). To determine the suitability of each dung type for reproduction, we measured offspring abundance and fitness. While the number of developed offspring was significantly different among treatments, offspring fitness did not vary significantly across dung types. Our results demonstrate the generalist feeding habits of the non-indigenous dung beetle O. nuchicornis can allow this species to use the dung of various wild animals indigenous to eastern North America.
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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 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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 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".