FUNCTIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF FLUCTUATING ASYMMETRY AMONG ENDEMIC POPULATIONS OF GASTEROSTEUS ACULEATUS
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) has been used as a measure of developmental stability across many taxa, with asymmetric individuals presumed to have reduced fitness. FA has also been suggested for use in conservation biology as a measure of the health of populations. Here we assess the suitability of these uses of FA by using a novel measure of asymmetry in the bony lateral plates of threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) from 60 insular and endemic freshwater populations from the Queen Charlotte Islands. The frequency of asymmetric G. aculeatus individuals among populations varied from 1% to 76% with a mean of 42%. Extreme variation in the frequency of asymmetries among lateral plate positions within samples was also observed. Plates important to the structural integrity of predator defences were least asymmetric, either due to selection against asymmetry at these positions or to variation in the temporal development of the plates. These results emphasize the need for caution when interpreting differential levels of FA among traits in individuals and populations, as the differences may be due to variation in the strength or direction of selection for symmetry, and not exclusively to differences in fitness.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".