Impacts of mosquitoes and black flies on defensive behaviour and microhabitat use of the North American porcupine (<i>Erethizon dorsatum</i>) in southern Quebec
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Biting flies are known to influence the behaviour and microhabitat use of certain mammals. However, most studies were realized in open habitats. Our objective was to determine if mosquitoes (Culicidae) and black flies (Simuliidae) affect the behaviour and habitat use of a mammal typical of the boreal forest, the North American porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum (L., 1758)). The project was divided into three parts: (1) abundance of biting flies and their (2) direct effects (bites) and (3) indirect effects (repelling movements and microhabitat use) on porcupines. The abundance of insects was measured with CO2-baited traps. Ten male porcupines were followed by telemetry. Mosquitoes were more abundant on the ground than in the tree canopy and the opposite was observed for black flies. The biting flies were less abundant inside dens than outside. The quantity of bites on porcupines was correlated with the abundance of black flies. We observed frequent repelling movements that were associated with the presence of insects. Some microhabitats offered excellent protection against biting insects, but porcupines did not use these refuges to a greater extent at the peak of insect abundance. We conclude that, although biting flies had measurable impacts on the wounding rate and behaviour of porcupines, this did not translate into important shifts in habitat use.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 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".