Mother–offspring reunion in the South American sea lion<i>Otaria flavescens</i>at Isla de Lobos (Uruguay): use of spatial, acoustic and olfactory cues
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In the South American sea lion (Otaria flavescens), mothers and pups are regularly separated throughout lactation, demanding a well-developed individual recognition system. The aim of this study was to investigate and quantify the searching and reunion behaviour between mothers and pups at Isla de Lobos, Uruguay. We recorded details of searches and reunions using focal animal sampling during two breeding seasons. Our results support the hypotheses that mother–pup dyads combine spatial, acoustic and olfactory cues for successful recognition and reunion behaviour and that pups play an active role in the process. A total of 74% of the females returning from sea visited the last zone (4 × 4 m grid cell) where they had been with their pup prior to separating. Pups spent close to 23% of their time at that location while their mothers were away foraging at sea. Female call rate was significantly higher in successful searches (i.e. those resulting in a reunion) compared to unsuccessful ones (Mann–Whitney test U = 72.5, P < 0.001). During reunions, 90% of the pups called prior to physical contact and search success varied significantly with their movement towards the mother (Fisher exact test P = 0.039). Lastly, mothers conducted olfactory investigations of their offspring during 97.6% of the reunions; they also conducted olfactory investigations of 53.6% of the non-offspring that approached them. In sum, multiple sensory modalities appear to play important roles during O. flavescens mother–offspring reunion behaviour, as has often been described but rarely quantified for other otariid species.
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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 | 0.000 | 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 | 0.001 | 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) | 0.001 | 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".