Consistent individual differences in the foraging behaviour of forest tent caterpillars (<i>Malacosoma disstria</i>)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Outbreaking insects are often considered identical units despite recent work in behavioural ecology that shows repeatable differences can exist between individuals and can have important implications for individual fitness and population processes. However, although entomologists have neglected the hypothesis that differences between individuals can play an important role in the ecology of a species, it is not new. Wellington (1957. Can. J. Zool. 35: 293–323) suggested that consistent individual differences in behaviour may play a role in the population dynamics of Malacosoma (Hübner, 1820) species (Lepidoptera: Lasiocampidae). We used a novel approach to determine if individual larval Malacosoma disstria Hübner, 1820 exhibit distinct and repeatable behavioural traits. Second-instar caterpillars were placed on individual arenas for 1 h on 4 consecutive days, and the proportion of time spent walking, searching, quiescent, and eating was documented. Active and sluggish behavioural types were distinguished and stable differences in individual activity were observed. Activity was positively correlated with growth during the 4 days of the experiment, but no significant relationship was detected between behaviour during the experiment and overall larval performance in the laboratory setting. These findings demonstrate consistent variation in the foraging behaviour of forest tent caterpillars and lay the basis for further investigatison of its role in colony function and population dynamics.
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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 | 0.000 | 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".