Size-selective predation by river otter (Lontra canadensis) improves refuge properties of shallow coastal marine nursery habitats
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Young fish often avoid deep water to reduce predation risk from larger fish. Less clear are explanations for the avoidance of shallows by large piscivorous fish; however, one hypothesis suggests that this distribution reduces contact with depth-limited semi-aquatic mammal and bird piscivores. We determined prey size selection of the river otter ( Lontra canadensis (Schreber, 1777)) to test the hypothesis that larger fish are at elevated risk in shallow coastal waters in Newman Sound, Newfoundland, during June–November 2001 and May 2002. We compared otter diet (scat analysis) and prey availability (seine sampling) to test this hypothesis. Five fish taxa (Atlantic cod ( Gadus morhua L., 1758), Greenland cod ( Gadus ogac Richardson, 1836), shorthorn sculpin ( Myoxocephalus scorpius (L., 1758)), cunner ( Tautogolabrus adspersus (Walbaum, 1792)), and winter flounder ( Pseudopleuronectes americanus (Walbaum, 1792))) dominated the shallow-water fish community and were sufficiently abundant in otter scats to examine feeding preferences. Larger, piscivorous fish were selected by otters, suggesting that they were at greater risk of predation than smaller fish, consistent with our hypothesis that depth-limited, diurnally active predators restrict large fish from hunting in shallow water during daytime. We suggest that depth-limited air-breathing predators may reduce the presence of such predatory fish in shallow-water juvenile fish nursery habitats.
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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 | 0.000 | 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".