RED SQUIRRELS (TAMIASCIURUS HUDSONICUS) FEEDING ON SPRUCE BARK BEETLES (DENDROCTONUS RUFIPENNIS): ENERGETIC AND ECOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We report the novel occurrence of North American red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) feeding on spruce bark beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis) larvae, and consider the energetic and ecological implications. Although a bark beetle outbreak was 1st noted at our study site in 1994, significant feeding on them by red squirrels was not observed until 2002, after which there was significant increase in the prevalence of autumn beetle foraging by squirrels into 2003. This increase corresponded with a decrease in spruce seed availability, the squirrels' preferred food source. Spruce bark beetles currently represent an important food source, with 73% of monitored squirrels engaged in beetle feeding in autumn 2003, providing 20% of daily energy requirements. In autumn 2002 and 2003, the density of beetle-infested trees on a squirrel's territory was a significant predictor of whether it fed on beetle larvae but not the proportion of its foraging bouts involving bark beetles. Feeding on larval spruce bark beetles by red squirrels represents a short-term solution to a climate-mediated beetle outbreak that will ultimately reduce local spruce seed production and habitat suitability for red squirrels.
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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 | 0.000 |
| 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 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".