Preparing Undergraduates for Research Careers: Using Astrobites in the Classroom

Because undergraduate participation in research is a longstanding and increasingly important aspect of the career path for future scientists, students can benefit from additional resources to introduce them to the culture and process of research. We suggest the adoption of the web resource Astrobites as a classroom tool to increase the preparation of undergraduate physics and astronomy students for careers in research. We describe the content and development of the website, discuss previous university courses that have made use of Astrobites, and suggest additional strategies for using Astrobites in the classroom.Comment: Published in the Astronomy Education Revie

Demonstrations of the Potential of AI-based Political Issue Polling

Political polling is a multi-billion dollar industry with outsized influence on the societal trajectory of the United States and nations around the world. However, it has been challenged by factors that stress its cost, availability, and accuracy. At the same time, artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots have become compelling stand-ins for human behavior, powered by increasingly sophisticated large language models (LLMs). Could AI chatbots be an effective tool for anticipating public opinion on controversial issues to the extent that they could be used by campaigns, interest groups, and polling firms? We have developed a prompt engineering methodology for eliciting human-like survey responses from ChatGPT, which simulate the response to a policy question of a person described by a set of demographic factors, and produce both an ordinal numeric response score and a textual justification. We execute large scale experiments, querying for thousands of simulated responses at a cost far lower than human surveys. We compare simulated data to human issue polling data from the Cooperative Election Study (CES). We find that ChatGPT is effective at anticipating both the mean level and distribution of public opinion on a variety of policy issues such as abortion bans and approval of the US Supreme Court, particularly in their ideological breakdown (correlation typically >85%). However, it is less successful at anticipating demographic-level differences. Moreover, ChatGPT tends to overgeneralize to new policy issues that arose after its training data was collected, such as US support for involvement in the war in Ukraine. Our work has implications for our understanding of the strengths and limitations of the current generation of AI chatbots as virtual publics or online listening platforms, future directions for LLM development, and applications of AI tools to the political domain. (Abridged)Comment: 23 pages, 7 figure

Response of macroarthropod assemblages to the loss of hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), a foundation species

In eastern North American forests, eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) is a foundation species. As hemlock is lost from forests due to the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) and preemptive salvage logging, the structure of assemblages of species associated with hemlock is expected to change. We manipulated hemlock canopy structure at hectare scales to investigate the effects of hemlock death on assemblages of ants, beetles, and spiders in a New England forest. Relative to reference hemlock stands, both in situ death of hemlock and logging and removal of hemlock altered composition and diversity of beetles and spiders, and logging increased the species richness and evenness of ant assemblages. Species composition of ant assemblages in disturbed habitats was non-random relative to the regional species pool, but we found no evidence that interspecific competition shaped the structure of ant, beetle, or spider assemblages, in either manipulated or intact forest stands. Environmental filtering by hemlock appears to maintain low levels of species richness and evenness in forest stands, suggesting that the loss of hemlock due to the hemlock woolly adelgid or human activities will not likely lead to extirpations of ant, beetle, or spider species at local scales

Response of macroarthropod assemblages to the loss of hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), a foundation species

In eastern North American forests, eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) is a foundation species. As hemlock is lost from forests due to the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) and preemptive salvage logging, the structure of assemblages of species associated with hemlock is expected to change. We manipulated hemlock canopy structure at hectare scales to investigate the effects of hemlock death on assemblages of ants, beetles, and spiders in a New England forest. Relative to reference hemlock stands, both in situ death of hemlock and logging and removal of hemlock altered composition and diversity of beetles and spiders, and logging increased the species richness and evenness of ant assemblages. Species composition of ant assemblages in disturbed habitats was non-random relative to the regional species pool, but we found no evidence that interspecific competition shaped the structure of ant, beetle, or spider assemblages, in either manipulated or intact forest stands. Environmental filtering by hemlock appears to maintain low levels of species richness and evenness in forest stands, suggesting that the loss of hemlock due to the hemlock woolly adelgid or human activities will not likely lead to extirpations of ant, beetle, or spider species at local scales

Response of Macroarthropod Assemblages to the Loss of Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), a Foundation Species

In eastern North American forests, eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) is a foundation species. As hemlock is lost from forests due to the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) and pre-emptive salvage logging, the structure of assemblages of species associated with hemlock is expected to change. We manipulated hemlock canopy structure at hectare scales to investigate the effects of hemlock death on assemblages of ants, beetles, and spiders in a New England forest. Relative to reference hemlock stands, both in situ death of hemlock and logging and removal of hemlock altered composition and diversity of beetles and spiders, and logging increased the species richness and evenness of ant assemblages. Species composition of ant assemblages in disturbed habitats was non-random relative to the regional species pool, but we found no evidence that interspecific competition shaped the structure of ant, beetle, or spider assemblages, in either manipulated or intact forest stands. Environmental filtering by hemlock appears to maintain low levels of species richness and evenness in forest stands, suggesting that the loss of hemlock due to the hemlock woolly adelgid or human activities will not likely lead to extirpations of ant, beetle, or spider species at local scales.Organismic and Evolutionary BiologyOther Research Uni

Species interactions and thermal constraints on ant community structure

Patterns of species occurrence and abundance are influenced by abiotic factors and biotic interactions, but these factors are difficult to disentangle without experimental manipulations. In this study, we used observational and experimental approaches to investigate the role of temperature and interspecific competition in controlling the structure of groundforaging ant communities in forests of the Siskiyou Mountains of southwestern Oregon. To assess the potential role of competition, we first used null model analyses to ask whether species partition temporal and/or spatial environments. To understand how thermal tolerances influence the structure of communities, we conducted a laboratory experiment to estimate the maximum thermal tolerance of workers and a field experiment in which we added shaded microhabitats and monitored the response of foragers. Finally, to evaluate the roles of temperature and interspecific competition in the field, we simultaneously manipulated shading and the presence of a dominant competitor (Formica moki). The foraging activity of species broadly overlapped during the diurnal range of temperatures. Species co-occurrence patterns varied across the diurnal temperature range: species were spatially segregated at bait stations at low temperatures, but co-occurred randomly at high temperatures. The decreased abundance of the co-occurring thermophilic Temnothorax nevadensis in shaded plots was a direct eff ect of shading and not an indirect eff ect of competitive interactions. Thermal tolerance predicted the response of ant species to the shading experiment: species with the lowest tolerances to high temperatures showed the greatest increase in abundance in the shaded plots. Moreover, species with more similar thermal tolerance values segregated more frequently on baits than did species that diff ered in their thermal tolerances. Collectively, our results suggest that thermal tolerances of ants may mediate competitive eff ects in habitats that experience strong diurnal temperature fluctuations. © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Oikos