Population decline in semi-migratory caribou (<i>Rangifer tarandus</i>): intrinsic or extrinsic drivers?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Many populations of caribou (Rangifer tarandus (L., 1758)) across North America, including Newfoundland, are in a state of decline. This phenomenon may reflect continental-scale changes in either the extrinsic or the intrinsic factors affecting caribou abundance. We hypothesized that caribou decline reflected marked resource limitation and predicted that fluctuations should correspond to time-delayed density dependence associated with a decline in range quality and decadal trends in winter severity. By conducting time-series analysis using 12 populations and evaluating correlations between caribou abundance and trends in (i) vegetation available at calving (normalized difference vegetation index, NDVI), (ii) winter weather severity (index of North Atlantic Oscillation, NAO), and (iii) caribou morphometrics, we observed strong evidence of density dependence in population dynamics (i.e., a negative relationship between caribou population size and caribou morphometrics). Caribou population trajectories were time-delayed relative to winter severity, but not relative to calving-ground greenness. These island-wide correlations could not be traced to dispersal between herds, which appears rare at least for adult females. Our results suggest that trends in winter severity may synchronize broad-scale changes in caribou abundance that are driven by time-delayed density dependence, although it remains possible that calving-ground deterioration also may contribute to population limitation in Newfoundland. Our findings provide the basis for additional research into density dependence and caribou population decline.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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".