Stressful conditions experienced by endangered<scp>E</scp>gyptian vultures on<scp>A</scp>frican wintering areas
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract AmongEuropean breeding birds, those wintering in theSahel region have undergone a sustained and severe decline. Long‐term data show that variation in primary production of theSahelian staging area significantly affects survival of many species, a relationship probably mediated by trophic resource availability. However, the physiological, hormonal and behavioural responses underlying this relationship remain unexplored. We present a potential explanation for the importance of prevailing conditions during winter to understand the population ecology and current trends of migratory species. We measured corticosterone levels in feathers ofEgyptian vulturesNeophron percnopterusgrown inAfrica andEurope, showing how conditions faced by birds during wintering periods result in the release of more corticosterone over time than when those individuals were on their summering grounds. This pattern was concordant with home‐range size differences (c.33 times larger inAfrica than inEurope). We suggest that as wintering habitat ofEgyptian vultures in theSahel region has degraded during recent times, food availability has also been reduced. An increase in corticosterone during winter with a consequent increase in locomotor activity, for example, food searching behaviour, may normally be adaptive. However, enlarging home ranges could be futile if conditions are not better in the dispersal area, and costs of the higher corticosterone level, including energy expenditure from enhanced activity, may pose a significant trade‐off. These physiological responses may be characteristic of otherEuropean trans‐Saharan migrant birds that have undergone significant population declines.
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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 | 0.001 | 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".