Habitat heterogeneity drives plant-pollinator network diversity on the tundra of Victoria Island, Nunavut, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We often perceive the Arctic as a barren ice-covered desert, but life abounds during the short summers when 24-hour daylight fuels plants' growth and, subsequently, terrestrial arthropod populations. Though Arctic landscapes appear uniform, variations in topography, substrate composition, and water availability result in micro-scale habitat heterogeneity with different resident plant and insect species. Some of these species interact with each other to form plant-pollinator networks. Global climate change is disproportionately impacting the Arctic more than elsewhere on Earth, and this change may disrupt plant-pollinator networks. This thesis quantifies the diversity of insects, plants, and interactions and determines structural properties of plant-pollinator networks in the Canadian Arctic.I sampled plant-pollinator networks in two distinct microhabitats of the Victoria Lowlands on Victoria Island, Nunavut: (1) rocky, xeric habitats and (2) cryosolic, mesic habitats. I observed 2,421 total interactions (65 unique pairwise interactions) between 15 insect groups (family, sub-order, or order) and 17 species of conspicuously flowering plants. Alpha, beta, and gamma diversity of insects, plants, and interactions did not differ between microhabitats. However, insect groups were more evenly distributed in xeric microhabitats. Plant and pollinator communities were compositionally, but not structurally, different. Apidae, Lepidoptera, Asteraceae, and Fabaceae were associated with xeric sites, and Psyllidae, Symphyta, Salix spp., and Astragalus spp. were associated with mesic sites. Network structure differed slightly between microhabitats: mesic sites had higher interaction strength asymmetry, nestedness, and plant vulnerability than xeric microhabitats.This work provides a valuable snapshot of two distinct plant-pollinator networks in the Canadian Arctic and highlights the role habitat heterogeneity plays in driving landscape biodiversity. Understanding this role and documenting species interactions will be necessary for monitoring future change in the Arctic and developing conservation policies
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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 | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 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) | 0.002 | 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".