Brain Arginine Vasotocin Immunoreactivity Differs between Urban and Desert Curve-Billed Thrashers, <i>Toxostoma curvirostre</i>: Relationships with Territoriality and Stress Physiology
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The neuropeptide arginine vasotocin (AVT: the avian homolog of vasopressin) has numerous functional roles including mediating social behaviors, coregulating the adrenocortical stress response and maintaining water balance. These functions of AVT make it susceptible to environmental influence, yet little is understood concerning the variation in the AVT system across habitats. In this study, AVT immunoreactivity was compared between male curve-billed thrashers, Toxostoma curvirostre, from native Sonoran Desert locations and those within the city of Phoenix, Ariz. Previous research found that urban thrashers are more responsive to territorial intrusion, secrete more corticosterone (CORT) during capture stress, and they may also have greater access to water than desert counterparts. Variation in AVT immunoreactivity was also related to levels of plasma CORT and osmolality, and with behavioral responses to a simulated territorial intrusion. Birds from these two habitats showed different AVT immunoreactive patterns in two brain regions: the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus and the medial bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTM), a part of the limbic system. Immunoreactive AVT within the paraventricular nucleus was associated with plasma CORT levels in urban, but not desert, birds, but no such association with osmolality was observed in birds from either habitat. The total number of BSTM AVT-immunoreactive cells was related to a decreased responsiveness to territorial intrusion. These data suggest that divergence in the AVT system between urban and desert thrashers may help explain observed differences in both the adrenocortical stress response and territorial behavior between populations. Whether differences in water availability between habitats contribute to population differences in the brain AVT system is unknown.
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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 | 0.001 | 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) | 0.001 | 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".