Ecology and Sensitivity to Environmental Change of a Northern Population of Spotted Salamander, Ambystoma maculatum
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Amphibians perform numerous ecological roles—as predators and prey, as connectors of energy flow between aquatic and terrestrial landscapes, and as sizable contributors to vertebrate biomass—in wetland and forest ecosystems. Amphibians are also modern “canaries in the coal mine”, serving as a barometer for assessing environmental health. The Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) is geographically widespread in eastern North America and is well-studied. This research arises from long-term monitoring of Spotted Salamanders at Bat Lake in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada, approaching the species northern climatic range edge. In 2008, monitoring efforts were formalized into a capture-mark-recapture study, collecting morphological, reproduction, and population data. The long-term aims of this project are to monitor baseline population vital rates and assess the effects of climate (change) on a northern salamander population. Chapter One introduces salamanders as research subjects and the ecology of Bat Lake. Chapter Two presents a synthesis of Spotted Salamander biology based on 15-years of monitoring data, including phenology of spring breeding and post-metamorphic dispersal, operational sex ratio, early life survival, body size of adults and metamorphic juveniles, age and size at maturity, longevity, and spatial habitat use. These findings are paired with a literature review to compare the natural and life history of Bat Lake salamanders to other populations. Chapter Three estimates population vital rates, including adult survival and abundance, and provides suggestions on how to sample the Bat Lake salamander population to inform continued long-term ecological and demographic study. Chapter Four investigates the influence of seasonal climate on body condition, reproductive output, and breeding phenology. Breeding body condition declined over a 12 year monitoring period (2008–2019) with warmer summer temperatures at least partly responsible for the observed decline in body condition, highlighting the vulnerability of fossorial taxa and subterranean environments amid accelerating climate change. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of salamander ecology and begins to address a knowledge gap about the consequences of climate (change) for amphibian populations.
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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".