Ovivorous Opportunities: Predation Events During Nest Guarding in a Freshwater Fish Species
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT The construction and defense of nests leading up to and following spawning is widespread across freshwater fishes. Despite the known role of nesting in sexual selection and the establishment of social hierarchy, how nesting and nest guarding behavior may shape predation risk for both offspring and nest guarding individuals remains relatively underexplored for many species. Here, we documented a novel interaction between a nest guarding fish species, the pumpkinseed sunfish (Lepomis gibbosus), and common snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina) during the pumpkinseed nesting period. Field surveys were conducted over 3 days in an Ontario wetland to document nest densities, predator presence, and predation attempts by potential nest predators. A total of 118 pumpkinseed nests were observed, with all but five nests located in colonies. In nine instances, adult snapping turtles were recorded inspecting guarded pumpkinseed nests. On two occasions, snapping turtles were observed consuming nest contents, as indicated by a gulping motion while on the nest. Male pumpkinseed exhibited defensive behaviors, such as diversion and aggression. Following these interactions, we returned to quantify nest abandonment in three nests and observed that pumpkinseed had abandoned each nest within 48 h. While no observations of predation by snapping turtles on adult sunfish were made, other opportunistic predators made foraging attempts on guarding males. Though nest guarding can improve egg and offspring survival, our results document that predators are still capable of consuming nest contents even while guarded. Omnivorous foraging on fish eggs that are only briefly available to consumers but spatially aggregated in specific spawning habitats and nest colonies warrants future work evaluating the impact of nesting for: (1) adult and offspring survival across systems with divergent predator communities, and (2) the contribution of egg consumption to the seasonal energy budgets of egg predators.
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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 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 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".