ARE LATE-SPRING BOREAL LESSER SCAUP (<i>AYTHYA AFFINIS</i>) IN POOR BODY CONDITION?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In many waterfowl species, females in better body condition have greater reproductive success than those in poor condition; thus, large-scale changes in body condition could influence species' population dynamics. Indices of annual productivity have decreased in Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis), and the "spring condition" hypothesis (SCH) has been proposed to account for poor production and low populations in this species. We compared nutrient reserves of female Lesser Scaup and Ring-necked Ducks (A. collaris) collected during the breeding season at multiple sites in the Canadian boreal forest, the region where ~70% of both species breed and where they have had contrasting population trends for the past 25 years. Lesser Scaup tended to carry greater somatic lipid but slightly lower protein reserves than Ring-necked Ducks, after controlling for size. The proportion of females developing follicles was similar in both species, though Lesser Scaup initiated egg development later and exhibited less temporal variance in nesting date than Ring-necked Ducks. We also directly tested the SCH by comparing contemporary arrival and prebreeding body masses of Lesser Scaup with historical values at one boreal-forest site. However, body masses of Lesser Scaup collected in 2003–2004 were comparable to those of Lesser Scaup collected at Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, during 1968–1970. Overall, our results suggest that currently, body condition of boreal-breeding Lesser Scaup is relatively similar to that of Ring-necked Ducks and to historical levels for Lesser Scaup. Future studies of factors that limit recovery of Lesser Scaup should examine migration patterns and the effects of climate change on the timing of both energetic requirements in Lesser Scaup and food-resource availability.
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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 | 0.000 |
| 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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".