A PROBABLE GRASSHOPPER × SAVANNAH SPARROW HYBRID SINGING A SONG SPARROW SONG
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We observed a male sparrow in May 1999 in Stow, Massachusetts, that showed hybrid characteristics resembling both Grasshopper Sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum) and Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis). During 1999 and 2000, this male sang a simplified Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia) song. However, in 2001 it also sang a typical Savannah Sparrow song and frequently alternated between these two songs. We recorded songs and captured this individual in an area with numerous Song Sparrows and about three pairs of Savannah Sparrows. We compared mitochondrial DNA, morphological measurements, behavior, and audio spectrograms of this hybrid with similar data from Grasshopper, Savannah, and Song sparrows. Genetic analysis indicated that the hybrid's mother was almost certainly a Grasshopper Sparrow. The hybrid showed morphological traits that were within the range of both Savannah Sparrow and Song Sparrow, but generally were more consistent for Savannah Sparrow. We observed this individual frequently associating with Savannah Sparrows, attempting to copulate with a female Savannah Sparrow, carrying Savannah Sparrow fecal sacs, and feeding young Savannah Sparrows, lending additional support to Savannah Sparrow paternity. We conclude that this individual was a Grasshopper × Savannah sparrow hybrid that learned to imitate the songs of Song Sparrows at an early stage of development. Interestingly, the hybrid's exposed culmen was considerably longer than culmen measurements of any of the three species of sparrows under consideration.
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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) | 0.000 | 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".