Are fat bankers losing their liquid assets? Changes in lipid accumulation for a nectar‐feeding migratory moth
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Lepidoptera that seasonally migrate to high elevation sites may be especially vulnerable to climate change. Alpine and montane ecosystems are warming at accelerated rates, and increased temperatures can act directly on insect physiology, development and distributions. In addition, changing patterns of temperature and precipitation can impact critical food resources for migratory butterflies and moths. For example, many migratory Lepidoptera accumulate lipids from nectar‐feeding as adults, but hot or dry conditions can shorten the duration of flowering or reduce flower abundance. Our objective was to evaluate how nectar resources and lipid accumulation in army cutworm moths ( Euxoa auxiliaris ) have changed since originally evaluated in 1978–1980. Army cutworm moths are a lipid‐accumulating migratory insect of Western North America. Larvae and pupae overwinter in the central plains, after which adults migrate to high elevations in the early summer. Adults then feed on nectar and accumulate lipids to support the energetic demands of migration back to the plains, where their larvae are sporadic pests. We replicated plant and moth sampling in the alpine tundra at Pennsylvania Mountain, Colorado USA. To assess changes in nectar resources, we resurveyed three white‐flowered alpine plants in five vegetation plots in 2022 and 2023. This allowed us to compare contemporary flower abundance (maximum flowers·m −2 ) and phenology to the original surveys of these plots in 1977–1980. To assess changes in moth abundance, phenology and lipid contents, we placed UV‐light traps at four sites in the alpine tundra in June and July of 2021–2023, repeating an earlier trapping study performed in 1978–1980. We found significant declines in the abundance of three white‐flowered alpine plants since 1977–1980 but no changes in the timing of end‐of‐flowering. Reduced flower abundance is consistent with warmer and drier conditions in the Rocky Mountains over this time frame. For army cutworm moths, we did not detect changes in moth abundance (maximum moths·trap −2 ), but we found support for phenological differences between past and contemporary study periods. As with other alpine insects, army cutworm moths appear to have accelerated their phenology, with moth abundance decreasing by earlier trapping dates. We also observed declines in lipid contents of moths across trapping dates in June and July, while in the past, army cutworm moths gained lipids during this timeframe. Our results suggest that summer nectar foraging at high elevation sites in the Rocky Mountains no longer supports lipid accumulation by army cutworm moths. Because lipid reserves are critical for migration and reproduction, this change could impact army cutworm moth abundance and ultimately their broader roles in ecosystems and as agricultural pests.
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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 | 0.000 | 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) | 0.000 | 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".