Unequal summer use of beaver ponds by river otters: influence of beaver activity, pond size, and vegetation cover
Bibliographic record
Abstract
River otters ( Lontra canadensis (Schreber, 1777)) and beavers ( Castor canadensis Kuhl, 1820) are semi-aquatic mammals that can occur sympatrically in freshwater ecosystems of North America, including beaver ponds. Although little research has been done on the relationship between these species, it has been described as commensal. Relatively little is known about what pond characteristics potentially influence otter use. During the summer of 2004, we documented otter activity signs (i.e., feces) at 56 beaver ponds located in Kouchibouguac National Park of Canada, along the east coast of New Brunswick. We sought to identify which of 16 variables describing pond attributes were related to otter use. Otter activity at beaver ponds was positively associated with beaver presence, pond size, and vegetation cover. We discuss how these pond characteristics can benefit otters in terms of two key habitat needs, availability of prey and shelter. Our results are a first indication that the source–sink dynamic of beavers, whereby ponds are created, expanded, and abandoned, will create a mosaic of ponds that ultimately influences the river otter’s own pattern of habitat use and distribution.
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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 | 0.001 |
| 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".