Water boatman (Hemiptera: Corixidae) assemblages in Alberta change along pond consolidation and salinity gradients, and an updated key to species for the Canadian prairie provinces
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Water boatmen (Hemiptera: Corixidae) are diverse and common aquatic insects in Alberta that serve as a food source for other wildlife and link ponds and large rivers via seasonal mass-migrations. However, species-level ecological information for water boatmen in Alberta is limited, partly due to challenges caused by outdated and specialized taxonomic keys and labour-intensive sample processing. Previously, it was unknown how wetland salinization and the consolidation of numerous, smaller, non-permanent prairie pothole ponds into fewer, larger, permanent water bodies affects water boatman species richness, composition, and migration potential. First, I created an updated, beginner-friendly, photographically illustrated identification key to the water boatman species of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. I included a summary of species-level salinity tolerances based on a large-scale, multi-year Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute wetland dataset. Secondly, I compared the time costs and proportion of specimens extracted for various water boatman extraction methods: elutriation, flotation using various media, and behavioural extraction. Elutriation and sugar-water flotation were the most efficient. Lastly, I studied a gradient of pond consolidation with 14 quarter sections (64.75-ha land units) containing pond groups in the northwest Prairie Pothole Region of Alberta and collected water boatmen from each in the summer and fall of 2024, before and after the fall wetland-to-river water boatman migration. With increasing pond consolidation, water boatman species richness showed a non-significant decrease; however, there was a significant 54% reduction in the abundance of migrants. Furthermore, the abundances of two important migratory water boatman species, Callicorixa audeni Hungerford and Sigara decoratella (Hungerford), were significantly negatively associated with pond consolidation and these species occurred more frequently in lower salinities. My work will support the study of water boatmen in Alberta and beyond. My research findings suggest that pond consolidation and salinization negatively impact the migration-related ecosystem service provided by water boatmen in the northwest Prairie Pothole Region of Alberta. I recommend mitigating this impact through conservation of areas with high densities of fresh to moderately brackish non-permanent ponds.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".