Genetic diversity and differentiation of Kermode bear populations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Kermode bear is a white phase of the North American black bear that occurs in low to moderate frequency on British Columbia's mid-coast. To investigate the genetic uniqueness of populations containing the white phase, and to ascertain levels of gene flow among populations, we surveyed 10 highly polymorphic microsatellite loci, assayed from trapped bear hairs. A total of 216 unique bear genotypes, 18 of which were white, was sampled among 12 localities. Island populations, where Kermodes are most frequent, show approximately 4% less diversity than mainland populations, and the island richest in white bears (Gribbell) exhibited substantial genetic isolation, with a mean pairwise FST of 0.14 with other localities. Among all localities, FST for the molecular variant underlying the coat-colour difference (A893G) was 0.223, which falls into the 95th percentile of the distribution of FST values among microsatellite alleles, suggestive of greater differentiation for coat colour than expected under neutrality. Control-region sequences confirm that Kermode bears are part of a coastal or western lineage of black bears whose existence predates the Wisconsin glaciation, but microsatellite variation gave no evidence of past population expansion. We conclude that Kermodism was established and is maintained in populations by a combination of genetic isolation and somewhat reduced population sizes in insular habitat, with the possible contribution of selective pressure and/or nonrandom mating.
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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) | 0.001 | 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".