EFFECTS OF SIZE AND MIGRATORY BEHAVIOR ON THE EVOLUTION OF WING MOLT IN TERNS (STERNAE): A PHYLOGENETIC-COMPARATIVE STUDY
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Approximately 60% of the 45 species of terns (Sternae) have an unusual form of wing molt in which a variable number of inner primaries and outer secondaries are replaced two or three times in a single year—a process that has been called “repeated molt.” Although several hypotheses have been proposed for the maintenance of repeated molt, few data exist regarding potential selective forces that may have favored the evolution of this molt strategy, and there are no explanations for the high degree of interspecific variation in the extent of repeated molt. Preliminary investigations indicated that large terns tended to have less repeated molt than small terns and that the presence of repeated molt appeared to be associated with migratory behavior. We examined these initial findings by combining data from the literature, from examinations of museum specimens, and from a recent molecular phylogeny of the terns to perform phylogenetic-comparative tests. First, we used independent contrasts to verify that the association between large terns and less repeated molt was significant and not a result of shared ancestry. Second, we used tests for binary character association to evaluate the apparent link between repeated molt and migratory behavior. The results of these tests, along with reconstructions of ancestral states, led to a potential explanation for the origin of repeated molt, in which a tropical, sedentary ancestor gave rise to several lineages that spread to temperate areas and adopted a migratory life history. With this shift to a more seasonal regime came shortened breeding periods and perhaps more time for molt, which could have led to modifications of the ancestral molting strategy and the origin of repeated molt. Efectos del Tamaño y del Comportamiento Migratorio en la Evolución de la Muda del Ala en los Gaviotines (Sternae): Un Estudio Filogenético Comparativo
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| 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 | 0.000 | 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) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".