The Use of Captive American Kestrels (Falco sparverius) as Wildlife Models: A Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The American Kestrel (Falco sparverius) is a common North American falcon. As a result of a number of characteristics, including small size, annual reproduction, ability to be housed in large numbers, and ease of breeding in captivity, these falcons have been used as wildlife models for over four decades. Kestrels are best known for their use in the demonstration that 1,1,1-trichloro-2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl)ethane (DDT), and 1,1-dichloro-2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl)ethylene (DDE) caused eggshell thinning and reproductive failure in birds, and their use in the amelioration of captive propagation programs for the Peregrine Falcon (F. peregrinus). Since that time, kestrels have continued to play a prominent role in wildlife research, particularly in the field of toxicology, where they remain the only raptor species to be bred in sufficient numbers in captivity for statistically significant research. Kestrels have also been used for studies of avian biology, physiology, nutrition, and behavior. In recent years, concerns have been raised about factors that might affect the future use of captive kestrels as wildlife models, namely the declines in wild kestrel populations and the possible deleterious effects of long-term captive breeding, which could have implications for the comparability of wild and captive populations.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
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".