Morphological and metabarcoding dietary analysis of the cunner wrasse (<scp><i>Tautogolabrus adspersus</i></scp>) revealed significant regional variation, with large overlap between its common prey species and biofouling animals living on salmonid sea cages
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The stomach-less cunner wrasse (Tautogolabrus adspersus) has been experimentally used as a biological control agent for salmon lice that infest Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and to remove biofouling inside sea cages. The cunner demonstrates a strong population structure, suggesting that its diet, and therefore its usefulness for biological control, could differ among its populations along 1086 km of eastern Canada, in response to the biogeography of its prey species. Gastrointestinal tract samples were collected across 14 locations throughout five distinct regions from Southern Nova Scotia to Eastern Newfoundland between 2018 and 2022. Primary constituents of diet, identified using morphology and by percentage weight, were mussels, bryozoans, ascidians, gastropods, unidentified digested material and barnacles. Dietary DNA (dDNA) metabarcoding identified mussels in 46% of guts, amphipods in 45%, bryozoans in 31%, ascidians in 28% and sea anemones in 18%. Sea lice were rare yet present in samples from three separate regions. Permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) based on DNA metabarcoding suggested that sampling region, location and year all significantly influence diet composition. Regional divergence in diet was greatest between Southwestern Nova Scotia and Northeastern Newfoundland. Invasive cionid ascidians were present almost exclusively in Nova Scotian samples, whereas brittle stars were present almost exclusively in Northeastern Newfoundland samples. dDNA metabarcoding enabled the detection of soft-bodied prey and often identified prey to the species level. Cunner were demersal feeders on neritic sessile or slow-moving benthic animals that comprise the biofouling community. In addition to preying on sea lice and invasive ascidians, we predict that cunner wrasses will reduce the density of biofouling communities on structures used in marine aquaculture.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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".