Body Mass of Lesser Scaup during Fall and Winter in the Mississippi Flyway
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The combined continental breeding population of greater and lesser scaup (Aythya marila and A. affinis, respectively) in North America has declined markedly since the mid-1980s (Afton and Anderson 2001). Annual breeding population estimates have been consistently below the North American Waterfowl Management Plan (NAWMP) goal of 6.3 million scaup (United States Fish and Wildlife Service and Canadian Wildlife Service 1986), and the 2005 estimate was 46% below the NAWMP goal and the lowest on record (Wilkins et al. 2005). Afton and Anderson (2001) reported the overall decline in scaup may be driven primarily by reductions in the lesser scaup population. Multiple hypotheses have been posed to address the scaup population decline, which may be influenced by factors operating throughout the annual cycle and range of scaup (Austin et al. 2000, Afton and Anderson 2001). Anteau and Afton (2004) evaluated the spring condition hypothesis and reported nutrient reserves of female lesser scaup at spring stopover areas in the upper Mississippi Flyway and breeding areas in Manitoba, Canada, were lower in 2000 and 2001 than in the 1980s and reported that these nutrient reserves may impact female survival, breeding propensity, and reproductive success. However, body mass dynamics of fall migrating and wintering scaup have not been studied since the 1980s and early 1990s in the Mississippi Flyway, and investigations of body mass and nutrient reserves of lesser scaup are needed throughout the annual cycle and range of the species (Austin et al. 2000). Fall and winter body condition influences survival, physiological and behavioral events, and subsequent reproduction of waterfowl (Dubovsky and Kaminski 1994, Barboza and Jorde 2002). Nutrient reserves acquired from foods consumed on wintering and migrational areas can influence breeding propensity and reproductive performance of geese, some ducks, and other migratory birds (Ankney and MacInnes 1978, Alisauskas and Ankney 1992, Norris 2005), including lesser scaup that use lipids acquired during winter, spring migration, or on breeding areas for clutch formation (Esler et al. 2001). We collected lesser scaup during fall 1999–2000 and winter 2000–2001 from Manitoba, Canada, southward within the Mississippi Flyway to Louisiana, USA. Our objectives were to 1) estimate body mass of lesser scaup and analyze sex-specific variation in mass in relation to location of scaup collection, age, body morphometrics, and date of collection, and 2) compare our contemporary estimates of scaup mass to those from previous studies conducted at similar locations.
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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 | 0.001 | 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".