The Near Extinction of Two Large European Predators: Super Specialists Pay a Price
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract: Despite recovery plans, the Spanish Imperial Eagle ( Aquila adalberti ) and the Iberian lynx ( Lynx pardinus ) are in danger of extinction. These two flagship species tend to occur in pristine Mediterranean forests, and both prey preferentially on the rabbit ( Oryctologus cuniculus ). Spanish lynxes and eagles have sister species in continental Europe, the Eurasian lynx ( Lynx europaeus ) and the Eastern Imperial Eagle ( A. heliaca ), respectively. Recent genetic evidence indicates that these two pairs of species started to diverge from their ancestor species slightly less than 1 million years ago, when the longest‐lasting Pleistocene glaciations covered Europe. We hypothesize that the Iberian lynx and the Spanish Imperial Eagle emerged as separate species in the Pleistocene refugia of southern Spain, where they hunted yet another locally evolved species, the rabbit, on which they have become dependent for survival. Two large predators that emerged at the same time may go extinct simultaneously because of their inability to shift to alternative prey. Many other relict species, including numerous species from oceanic islands, have naturally small populations because of evolutionary constraints and are permanently threatened with extinction. Recovery plans aimed at putting these species out of danger are unrealistic, as their populations are and have been chronically scarce. We suggest that what these species need are maintenance plans designed to buffer population declines due to either stochastic or human‐induced events. A metaphor for this would be “emergency care units” for conservation.
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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 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
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".