Premating behavioral tactics of Columbian ground squirrels
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In polygynous and polygynandrous mating systems males possess a variety of behavioral tactics that increase their access to reproductive females. In addition to overt combat or defending resources that attract mates, males use premating tactics that provide them with subsequent opportunities to copulate with receptive females. For Columbian ground squirrels, Urocitellus columbianus, we report that co-occupation of a burrow system by a reproductive male and a female on the night before the female exhibits diurnal estrus is an example of such a tactic. Our hypothesis was that nocturnal underground association results in successful consortships and therefore constitutes a mating tactic that is complementary to other mating behaviors exhibited during a female's estrus. Under this hypothesis appropriate predictions are that: males co-occupying a burrow system with a female at night should mate first with that female; males co-occupying a burrow system with a female overnight should sire more of her offspring than her subsequent mates; and the reproductive success of males co-occupying a burrow system with females should be higher than the reproductive success of mates that do not. To test our predictions we used a combination of field observations on nocturnal underground consortships (NUCs) and microsatellite DNA analyses of paternity. Males copulated with females during NUCs, as evidenced by inseminations. These males sired more offspring than males that did not participate in NUCs. Males ≥3 years old participated in more NUCs than sexually mature 2-year-old males. Our results supported the hypothesis that entrance into NUCs with a female before she exhibits estrus was a premating tactic that increased male reproductive success when exhibited in concert with other mating tactics such as territorial defense.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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".