Den abandonment and transitional day bed use by black bears <i>Ursus americanus</i> in Newfoundland
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The use of day beds for extended periods during the transition into and out of the physiological state of hibernation has been documented in many bear populations, but has never been quantifi ed. Additionally, den abandonment by black bears Ursus americanus has rarely been observed at northern latitudes except after den visits by researchers. In three areas on the northern island of Newfoundland, where male and female black bears spent an average of 158 and 178 d denning, respectively, we identified den sites and extended‐use day beds (occupied continuously for 6–26 d) remotely using GPS collars, and here provide the first systematic description of the use of these day beds by bears. We documented den abandonment in 6 (9%; 3 F, 3 M) of 67 bear‐winters (6 [14%] of 44 radio‐collared bears) and the use of extended‐use transitional day beds in 16 (24%) of 67 bear‐winters (15 [34%] of 44 radio‐collared bears, 8 F, 7 M). In 5 of 10 instances bears left their fall day beds on days with > 15 mm of rain (mean = 28.2 mm, range = 15.6–63.6 mm), which was more than would be expected by chance (p < 0.01). We had more than one year of denning data for 17 bears, 6 (35%) of which reused den sites in diff erent years. Further, we observed some bears using day bed and den sites interchangeably. Though we hypothesized that environmental (flooding) or anthropogenic disturbance (researcher‐, forestry‐related, or recreational) may have played a role in den abandonment, we found no such relationships, nor was there a difference in the rate of abandonment or day bed use between male and female bears. We could not assess the eff ects of microhabitat attributes, condition, or reproductive status, but acknowledge that these factors may have played a role in den changes.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".