Cougars, <em>Puma concolor</em>, in Ontario: Additional Evidence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Recent evidence suggests that the Cougar (Puma concolor) has returned to New Brunswick, Quebec, Manitoba, and Ontario. An abundance of sightings have been reported for many decades throughout south-central Ontario, but genetic confirmation has been confounded by a lack of carcasses or DNA. In this paper, we identify (1) genetic evidence of a single Cougar in the wild of Ontario, (2) a gene (cytochrome b) and methodology to distinguish the Cougar from other mammals in Ontario using scats, hair follicles, and soft and hard tissue, and (3) a gene that can distinguish individual Cougars from each other and would distinguish populations of subspecies if they exist in Ontario. Potential Cougar scats and other tissue samples were collected from across Ontario, and hair snares baited with catnip and carnivore lure were placed in locations where Cougar sightings were frequent, near Sudbury, Ontario. We analyzed samples for mtDNA, and one scat sample from the Wainfleet Bog Conservation Area, Port Colborne, Ontario, was positive for Cougar. Evidence from archeological data and Cougar sightings suggests that the historical range of Cougars extended in Ontario from the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence Ecotone south, primarily associated with the Eastern Deciduous Forest Biome and the primary prey of the Cougar, the White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and the North American Elk (Cervus elaphus). The data suggest that Cougar distribution has moved north in recent times due to clear-cutting, along with their primary prey. Further studies of Cougar presence in the province are warranted.
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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 | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".