Winter body mass and over-ocean flocking as components of danger management by Pacific dunlins
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: We compared records of the body mass and roosting behavior of Pacific dunlins (Calidris alpina pacifica) wintering on the Fraser River estuary in southwest British Columbia between the 1970s and the 1990s. 'Over-ocean flocking' is a relatively safe but energetically-expensive alternative to roosting during the high tide period. Fat stores offer protection against starvation, but are a liability in escape performance, and increase flight costs. Peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) were scarce on the Fraser River estuary in the 1970s, but their numbers have since recovered, and they prey heavily on dunlins. The increase has altered the balance between predation and starvation risks for dunlins, and thus how dunlins regulate roosting behavior and body mass to manage the danger. We therefore predicted an increase in the frequency of over-ocean flocking as well as a decrease in the amount of fat carried by dunlins over these decades. RESULTS: Historical observations indicate that over-ocean flocking of dunlins was rare prior to the mid-1990s and became common thereafter. Residual body masses of dunlins were higher in the 1970s, with the greatest difference between the decades coinciding with peak peregrine abundance in October, and shrinking over the course of winter as falcon seasonal abundance declines. Whole-body fat content of dunlins was lower in the 1990s, and accounted for most of the change in body mass. CONCLUSIONS: Pacific dunlins appear to manage danger in a complex manner that involves adjustments both in fat reserves and roosting behavior. We discuss reasons why over-ocean flocking has apparently become more common on the Fraser estuary than at other dunlin wintering sites.
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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 | 0.001 | 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".