Habitat determines predation effects on sessile marine invertebrate communities at a tropical and temperate site
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Species interactions, such as predation, shape biological diversity by influencing community composition, species richness, and abundance. While predation is generally considered stronger in tropical than in temperate ecosystems, evidence from marine systems remains mixed. Many studies report stronger predation at lower latitudes, yet others show substantial predation at higher latitudes, likely due to variation in predator guilds. Studies reporting weaker predation in temperate marine invertebrate communities often focus on suspended substrates accessible to swimming predators like fish, whereas benthic habitats at higher latitudes reveal significant predation effects driven by invertebrate predators. To help reconcile these apparent inconsistencies, we conducted simultaneous experiments in Panama (tropical) and Chile (temperate) to assess the effects of benthic and swimming predators on sessile marine communities at well-studied sites. We used three-month predator exclusion experiments to test predation effects on community assembly, and two-week reciprocal transplant experiments to evaluate predation impacts on established communities. Our results show that benthic predation reduced biomass and altered species composition in both locations, whereas predation effects on suspended communities occurred only in Panama. Although our study focused on one tropical and one temperate location, it highlights the need to consider habitat and predator identity when comparing biogeographical patterns. While predation was generally stronger in Panama, our findings also demonstrate that benthic predators play a key role in structuring temperate marine invertebrate communities in Chile. These findings help reconcile conflicting results in the literature and underscore the importance of considering multiple predator guilds when examining latitudinal patterns of species interactions. • Benthic predators significantly shape sessile invertebrate communities in both Panama and Chile. • Predation effects vary between tropical (Panama) and temperate (Chile) sites. • Reciprocal transplant experiments reveal habitat-specific predation patterns. • Swimming predators affect suspended communities more in the tropics. • Findings underscore the importance of predator guilds in structuring communities.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".