Seasonal Variation in Forebrain Region Sizes in Male Ruffed Grouse <b><i>(Bonasa umbellus)</i></b>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The song system of songbirds has provided significant insight into the underlying mechanisms and behavioural consequences of seasonal neuroplasticity. The extent to which seasonal changes in brain region volumes occur in non-songbird species has, however, remained largely untested. Here, we tested whether brain region volumes varied with season in the ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus), a gallinaceous bird that produces a unique wing-beating display known as 'drumming' as its primary form of courtship behaviour. Using unbiased stereology, we measured the sizes of the cerebellum, nucleus rotundus, telencephalon, mesopallium, hippocampal formation, striatopallidal complex and arcopallium across spring males, fall males and fall females. The majority of these brain regions did not vary significantly across these three groups. The two exceptions were the striatopallidal complex and arcopallium, both of which were significantly larger in spring males that are actively drumming. These seasonal changes in volume strongly implicate the striatopallidal complex and arcopallium as key structures in the production and/or modulation of the ruffed grouse drumming display and represent the first evidence of seasonal plasticity in the telencephalon underlying a non-vocal courtship behaviour. Our findings also suggest that seasonal plasticity in the striatopallidal complex and arcopallium might be a trait that is shared across many bird species and that both structures are related to the production of multiple forms of courtship and not just learned song.
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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 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 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".