Fractal dimension of African mole-rat burrows
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The African mole-rats (Bathyergidae) are a model taxon on which to test evolutionary theories of the origin and maintenance of mammalian social behaviour, since species within the family range in social complexity from solitary to eusocial. The aridity food-distribution hypothesis suggests that sociality within the Bathyergidae has evolved as a consequence of habitat aridity, and the subsequent pattern of geophyte abundance and distribution. In more arid environments, because of the patchiness of this food resource, and the fact that burrowing is only possible during brief periods where rainfall has softened the soil, the risk of unsuccessful foraging is high. This risk may decrease when large numbers of animals are involved in cooperative searching. We examined 25 burrows of seven species within the Bathyergidae and used a simple box-counting method to determine their fractal dimension, which we propose as a measure of burrow architecture that allows explicit testing of differences in African mole-rat burrows within the theoretical framework of the aridity food-distribution hypothesis. We investigate the effect of habitat type and colony size on this parameter, and conclude that habitat type is reflected in burrow architecture in the common mole-rat, Cryptomys hottentotus hottentotus. We also found evidence that the burrows of species with larger maximum group size explore the surrounding area more thoroughly. The results support the contention that larger group size offers adaptive benefits in terms of how thoroughly the surrounding area is explored, and is not simply a consequence of the increased costs of dispersal and colonization in arid areas.
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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 | 0.001 |
| 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) | 0.000 | 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 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".