The pitfalls of extrapolation in conservation: movements and habitat use of a threatened toad are different in the boreal forest
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Widely distributed species often vary geographically in their ecology. Thus, results of studies done in one part of their range cannot necessarily be extrapolated readily to populations elsewhere. This problem is particularly important for threatened species whose ecology has been studied in a few disconnected locations. The Canadian toadBufo(Anaxyrus)hemiophrysoccupies a large geographic range in western North America, but most studies of its ecology have been done in the prairies, where the species is considered to be closely associated with aquatic habitats. However,B. hemiophrysalso occurs in boreal forest, where it faces threats from logging activities, especially if it uses upland habitats far from ponds and lakes. We radio‐tracked 29 toads in the boreal forest of northern Alberta, Canada to determine their patterns of movement and habitat use. Most movements between fixes were <50 m, but toads sometimes made longer movements exceeding 100 m. Over time, however, these short‐term movements combined into large‐scale directional movements that were highly variable among toads in both tortuosity and timing, but which generally took toads into upland forested habitats. Putative hibernacula also were located in upland sites. However, despite this terrestriality, toads still were associated with wetlands, using them significantly more often than would be expected based on their proportionate areal contribution to the landscape. Nonetheless, use of upland sites and long‐distance terrestrial movements differentiate this population ofB. hemiophrysfrom those studied in prairie environments. Conservation plans based on what we know about the species elsewhere therefore would be inappropriate in this region. Management often requires site‐specific information, which can be obtained only from natural‐history studies of the populations in question.
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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 | 0.053 | 0.134 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".