Convergent Evolution Driven by Similar Feeding Mechanics in Balaenopterid Whales and Pelicans
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The feeding apparatuses of rorqual whales and pelicans exhibit a number of similarities, including long, kinetic jaws that increase gape size, and extensible tissue comprising the floor of the mouth. These specializations enable the engulfment of large volumes of prey-laden water in both taxa. However, the mechanics of engulfment feeding in rorquals and pelicans have never been quantitatively compared. Here, we use "BendCT," a novel analytical program, to investigate the mechanical design of rorqual and pelican mandibles, to understand whether these bones show comparable designs for resisting similar hydrodynamical loads. We also compare the mechanical properties of the extensible tissue used during engulfment in rorquals and pelicans. We demonstrate that the evolutionary convergence in the feeding apparatus of rorquals and pelicans is more pronounced than has been recognized previously; both taxa exhibit mandibular flexural rigidity distributions suited for resisting dorsoventral bending stresses encountered while feeding, and possess similarly extensible tissue on the floor of their mouths.
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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 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".