Male lizards change their genital skin almost every day: squamate pan-epidermal synchrony refuted
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Lacertid lizards frequently shed the outer layers of the epidermis of the paired male intromittent organs, the hemipenes. The hemipenial sloughs so formed are saclike and reproduce all the external features of the hemipenes in great detail. Sloughs are deposited immediately after the first defecation of the day and are produced almost every morning during the breeding season. I have observed these in 48 lacertid species, including members of the genera Acanthodactylus, Adolfus, Algyroides, Gallotia, Holaspis, Lacerta s.l., Latastia, Podarcis, Psammodromus, and Takydromus. As these forms represent all three subfamilies of the Lacertidae, the phenomenon is likely to have been present in the common ancestor of the family. It may even be a general squamate feature, as it has also been observed in the distantly related varanid Varanus acanthurus. Frequent shedding of hemipenial sloughs violates pan-epidermal synchrony, the belief that the epidermis of squamates is shed simultaneously over all parts of the body, and indicates that the hemipenial epidermis is under different hormonal control from the rest of the skin. The function of frequent shedding of the hemipenial epidermis is not known for certain, but there is a wide range of possible hypotheses. Some of these are involved in increasing the efficiency of copulation and ameliorating its costs, while others emphasise the possible signalling function of the hemipenial sloughs.
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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 | 0.000 | 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) | 0.003 | 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".