A novel mobile approach to investigating mating tactics in male grey seals (<i>Halichoerus grypus</i>)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Studies of the grey seal Halichoerus grypus mating system, using focal animal sampling constrained by study site location and size, limit the measurement of variation in male mating tactics and success. Using this method, the mating tactics of grey seal males have been classified as either ‘tenured’ or ‘transient’. Preliminary evidence is presented of wider variation in male mating tactics and success using mobile focal‐animal techniques that are not constrained by site, and of the effects of age on behaviour when accounting for body mass. The study was conducted during the breeding seasons of 1997 and 1998 at Sable Island, Nova Scotia. Six young (11–12 years) and five old (20–25 years) males were captured at the beginning of the breeding season, weighed and fitted with a VHF transmitter and time‐depth recorder. Each male was located daily, and a count of late‐lactating females within a 10 m radius recorded as a measure of mating potential. Female guarding and observed copulatory attempts were used as a measure of mating success. Mean initial body mass of young males and old males was similar, 291 ± 13 kg and 298 ± 14 kg, respectively. All males changed location during the study period. Young males changed sites more often and moved shorter distances between sites than old males. Estimated mating success varied from probably no matings to a minimum of seven; there were no differences between young and old males. Maximum duration of stay at a site and the number of late‐lactating females at a site significantly influenced mating success. All the males except for two young males departed on diving excursions during the breeding season and engaged in deep diving behaviour. Diving behaviour did not differ between the age classes. Our results indicate that the current classification of mating tactics in grey seal males is an oversimplification. Preliminary data show that age may account for some of the variation in male behaviour on land and mating success, but not for behaviour at sea.
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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 | 0.001 | 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) | 0.000 | 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".