The “secret garden”: microphytobenthic biofilms and the foraging ecology of calidridine sandpipers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Food availability is well-known to have a strong influence on where and how shorebirds forage.A recent discovery is that microphytobenthic (MPB) biofilms, previously unknown to be used as food by any avian species, are an important component of the diet of small calidridine sandpipers.This dissertation investigates the as yet uninvestigated relations between the behavior and distribution of foraging calidridine sandpipers and MPB biofilm availability.I studied three calidridine species -western sandpiper (Calidris mauri), dunlin (Calidris alpina), least sandpiper (Calidris minutilla) -at three estuarine sites: Roberts Bank, an intertidal stopover site in Canada; and at Río Máximo and Tunas de Zaza, coastal stop-over sites in Cuba.Of these species, western sandpipers show the greatest modification of tongue and bill morphology for biofilm feeding.Infrared photography from ground and air and sediment sampling were used to assess the abundance of biofilm and the small benthic invertebrates fed on by sandpipers.Counts of shorebirds and measures of dropping density were conducted to assess bird distribution and habitat use.At Roberts Bank, the highest MPB biomass was found in the upper intertidal (0-750 m from shore, tide height range: 3.0-3.5 m), consisting of a diatomaceous biofilm, one the two major classes of MPB biofilms.Foraging dunlins closely followed the ebbing tide, exploiting the upper intertidal only briefly.In contrast, western sandpipers exploited the entire exposed tidalflat surface, spending much more time in the upper intertidal, matching MPB biomass more closely than the distribution of benthic invertebrates.Both Cuban sites showed a seasonal change in the type of MPB biofilm, shifting from cyanobacterial mats during southbound stopovers to diatomaceous biofilms during winter.In contrast to the foraging activity of western sandpipers at Roberts Bank, least sandpipers used foraging habitats in accordance with benthic invertebrate density rather than MPB biomass.I review the available evidence and conclude that the reason for this difference is that cyanobacterial mats provide poorer nutrition than diatomaceous biofilms.
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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 | 0.000 | 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".