Subspecies discrimination in the Scandinavian beaver (<i>Castor fiber</i>): combining behavioral and chemical evidence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Geographic isolation is one of several models that has been proposed to explain the evolutionary course of speciation. In this study, we examined how geographical isolation may affect subspecies discrimination in the free-ranging Scandinavian beaver (Castor fiber fiber L., 1758) by simulating a territorial intrusion by using scent (castoreum and anal gland secretion) from a con-subspecific (N = 8 for castoreum and N = 7 for anal gland secretion) and a hetero-subspecific (Castor fiber albicus Matschie, 1907; N = 2 for both castoreum and anal gland secretion). Direct observations of 33 families during evenings showed that beavers (i) sniffed castoreum but not anal gland secretion from C. f. fiber significantly longer than from C. f. albicus and (ii) responded aggressively (i.e., stood on the mound on their hind feet, pawing and (or) overmarking) significantly longer to castoreum but not anal gland secretion from C. f. fiber than from C. f. albicus. When experimental scent mounds were allowed to remain overnight, the response was significantly stronger to castoreum but not to anal gland secretion from C. f. fiber than from C. f. albicus. Gas chromatographic comparisons of castoreum and anal gland secretion from the two subspecies supported our behavioral observations for castoreum but not for anal gland secretion. These findings suggest that geographical isolation has developed discriminatory abilities in C. f. fiber. We further suggest that the proximate factors involved are of environmental origin.
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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".