Field Use of Ultrasonography to Characterize the Reproductive Tract and Early Pregnancy in a Phocid, the Weddell Seal (<i>Leptonychotes weddellii</i>)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The utility of transrectal ultrasonography was tested in a field setting to characterize the reproductive tract and detect early pregnancy (embryonic vesicles < 3 mm in diameter) in 17 multiparous female Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii). Female Weddell seals give birth in October/November each year, followed by the breeding season (December) and embryonic diapause. Transrectal ultrasonography was attempted in January/February 2014 to examine the entire reproductive tract (uterine horns and body, ovaries with follicles and corpora lutea) using a 5-10 MHz linear-array probe with a 70 cm-long extension. A single pregnancy was detected in 14 of 17 seals (82.4%) as a circular or guitar-pick shaped nonechogenic (black) vesicle with a clearly visible echogenic border within the lumen of the uterus. The stage of embryonic development (ostensibly the gestational age) varied markedly among individuals, ranging from a vesicle with no embryo proper to a large fetus with an ocular orbit, nose/mouth, limb buds, spinal column, umbilical cord, and prominent vasculature. Two of the pregnant seals were re-examined 3-6 days after the initial examination to obtain longitudinal growth rates. Images of one or both ovaries were obtained in nine and seven of the 19 examinations, respectively. Numerous ovarian follicles (3 to 12 mm diameter) were detected and animals typically had a single well-perfused corpus luteum (determined by Doppler color-flow) ipsilateral to the uterine horn containing the pregnancy. We conclude that real-time transrectal ultrasonography is an effective tool for characterizing reproductive events in phocids including ovarian dynamics, and for elucidating the nature of embryonic diapause.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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".