Unravelling the Ecological and Evolutionary Mysteries of the Rough Fescue Grasses F. Hallii and F. Campestris.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The rough fescue grasslands of western North America are diverse, unique ecosystems that provide essential ecological and agricultural services, yet have been significantly fragmented by land conversion, urbanization, and energy infrastructure. Only around 5% of their historic 137,000km^2 extent remains unmodified, and remaining prairie fragments face ongoing threat from unsustainable grazing practices, invasive crop species, and disruption of their natural disturbance regimes. Conserving and restoring rough fescue grasslands remains challenging due to the sensitivity of their defining species, the rough fescue grasses Festuca hallii and F. campestris, and a limited understanding of how rough fescue ecology and life history affects their fitness and persistence in disturbed environments. This dissertation addresses three components of rough fescue autecology that have direct applications for conservation and restoration; Chapter 2 investigates the role of dormancy and cold exposure on rough fescue seed germination using a comparative germination assay between F. hallii and F. campestris. It finds that the temperature and duration of seed storage has significant impacts on rough fescue germination, and can greatly enhance or stifle germination in seeds of the same age and provenance. Chapter 3 examines the prevalence of Epichloë fungal endophytes in wild rough fescue populations across a mosaic of disturbance conditions at Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park near Cochrane, Alberta. Here, I found high (µ >80%) levels of endophyte infection across all sites, and confirmed, for the first time, the presence of an Epichloë symbiosis in F. hallii. My final chapter explores the taxonomic and genetic relationship between F. hallii and F. campestris through a province-wide genomic survey of both allopatric and sympatric rough fescue populations. I discovered the occurrence of extensive and ongoing hybridization between the two species in their ranges of overlap, and additionally, found evidence of F. campestris introgression into allopatric populations of F. hallii. Collectively, these findings provide actionable ecological insights into the early life stages, mutualistic interactions, and genetic structure of rough fescue grasses, offering a foundation for more targeted and effective restoration practices in this imperiled grassland ecosystem.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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".