Mane variation in African lions and its social correlates
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Manes are generally thought to characterize all adult male lions (Panthera leo). Here we document a population of lions in Tsavo National Park, Kenya, that is largely maneless and describe aspects of their social organization. Because Tsavo's arid landscape supports sparse prey populations, we expected that surveys of lions there would document small social groups. We hypothesized that Tsavo lions would consequently experience reduced sexual selection pressures for mane development. Adult males from Tsavo typically have sparse blond hair forming a dorsal crest, beard, chest tufts, and (or) sideburns, but lack the large flowing manes reported from other lion populations. No fully maned lions were seen. Maneless males in Tsavo appear to be well integrated into pride life, and were observed copulating, hunting, and otherwise interacting with groups of females, playing with dependent cubs, and advertising territories with scent markings and roars. Only one adult male was observed in each of five prides, which differs surprisingly from the coalitions of 24 pride males noted in other lion groups. However, female group size was large (mean 7.4) and comparable with what has been documented in the Serengeti and elsewhere, refuting our "group size mane size" hypothesis. Future research should focus on the effect of Tsavo's physical and physiological effects on mane condition, and the possible correlation of male hormone levels with both manelessness and small male-group size.
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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 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".