Importance of prairie riparian zones to bats in southeastern Alberta
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The prairie grasslands of North America have undergone tremendous modification due to agriculture. The impact of continued modification is poorly understood because the critical habitat for many prairie species, including bats, is unknown. We investigated habitat use of bats in the vicinity of the South Saskatchewan and Red Deer Rivers in southeastern Alberta using mist-nets to capture bats and ultrasonic detectors to monitor echolocation calls. The majority of echolocation and foraging activity for all species occurred along the river and over small springs. Along the South Saskatchewan River, bat activity was highest near small patches of riparian cottonwood trees. Bat activity, especially for E. fuscus, was also relatively high along the cliffs and coulees of the river valley. Little bat activity occurred over the open grassland. Insect abundance corresponded to the activity patterns exhibited by bats: total insect biomass was greatest along the river and at springs. Bat activity was also related to the steepness and topography of the river valleys. Steep rugged areas along the rivers had significantly higher activity than areas with more gradual slopes. This is likely related to roost availability, as bats in the area roost in rock crevices in coulees. Our study indicates that riparian zones and springs are important foraging habitats for prairie bats. Conservation measures are needed for riparian forests in particular, because water regulation has modified natural flood patterns and reduced recruitment of trees.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 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".