Reporting Stable-Isotope Ratios in Ecology: Recommended Terminology, Guidelines and Best Practices
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The application of stable-isotope analysis (SIA) in ecology has increased exponentially in the last 20 years. As with any novel field of inquiry, there has been inconsistent (and sometimes confusing) use of terminology and great variation in how the results of SIA are presented in the scientific literature. Recently, guidelines and recommendations for the consistent use of terminology, the expression of results, and presentation of symbols were prepared and published at the request of the Commission on Isotopic Abundances and Atomic Weights (CIAAW) of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). Here, key components of the CIAAW recommendations pertinent to ecologists are summarized, along with suggestions for best practices in reporting results of SIA not covered by the CIAAW guidelines. A set of universally adopted and consistently used terminology and practices will minimize ambiguity, especially in the overlap of different fields, such as analytical chemistry and ecology. The Erratum for this article can be found inWaterbirds 35(3).
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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 | 0.125 | 0.356 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.027 | 0.035 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.010 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.014 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.011 | 0.015 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.012 | 0.022 |
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".