Biodiversity and ecology of salt marsh grass root endophytes from the Minas Basin, Nova Scotia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Recognized within international environmental laws, salt marshes play a critical role in several economically and ecologically important services, including recreational and commercial fisheries, providing coastal community protection, and contribute to mass carbon sequestration. Vegetation in Minas Basin, Nova Scotia salt marshes is dominated by keystone salt marsh grass species Sporobolus alterniflorus (formerly Spartina alterniflora), Sporobolus pumilus (formerly Spartina patens), and Sporobolus michauxianus (formerly Spartina pectinata). The biodiversity and interactions between plants and fungi in salt marsh sediment remain understudied. Sporobolus species roots were collected from three natural and one restored Minas Basin salt marsh and plated onto YMA+ and V8+ media to isolate non-mycorrhizal root endophytes in culture. DNA was PCR-amplified using the ITS5 and ITS4 primers to make taxonomic identifications. Sporobolus pumilus was also propagated from seed in tissue culture on five different media types, and roots were experimentally inoculated with four endophytic fungi identified from Sporobolus species: Paralulworthia sp.1, Falciphora sp., Dimorphospora sp., and Ophiosphaerella sp. Plant vigor and growth (root, and shoot lengths, and total plant weight) of control (non-inoculated) plants and plants inoculated with endophytes were assessed after 28 days of growth under controlled parameters. Thirteen filamentous fungi were identified and their known ecologies are discussed (endophytic, saprobic, pathogenic, plant growth promoter). Five taxa were identified as known marine fungi, with Paralulworthia being the most common genus collected. Natural salt marshes had higher root fungal species richness and abundance than the restored salt marsh studied. Endophyte inoculation results suggest S. pumilus plant and root growth promotion by some root endophytic fungi may be possible and warrants further study. This study will contribute to improving native salt marsh plant propagation and robust restoration techniques.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
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".