Spatial variation in food availability predicts extrapair paternity in the arctic fox
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Extrapair paternity (EPP) is described in many socially monogamous species, but within-population variability in its frequency is poorly documented. Availability and distribution of food may influence polyandrous behaviors, either directly by affecting the need for paternal care or indirectly via their effect on population density. We quantified the frequency of EPP in a population of arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus), a predominantly socially monogamous species with high paternal investment. We then tested whether spatial (presence of a goose colony) and temporal (cycles of lemmings) variations in food availability were linked to variations in mating systems within the population. From 2003 to 2008, we studied the mating systems of arctic foxes on Bylot Island (Nunavut, Canada) by combining molecular analyses with behavioral observations during cub rearing. Although the dominant social mating system was monogamy, at least 31% of cubs with known social father were born from extrapair matings (in 10 of 38 litters sampled). Likelihood of EPP was associated with food availability. It was greatest (86%) at the center of the goose colony and decreased sharply with increasing distance from it. EPP can thus be frequent in the socially monogamous arctic fox, and intraspecific variability in extrapair matings is strongly correlated with food availability during cub rearing.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 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) | 0.003 | 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 teacher head, 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".