Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs): impact on bat activity and foraging behaviour along the upper Hudson River, New York
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Sediments of the upper Hudson River, New York, USA, contain polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Consequently, elevated levels of PCBs have been found in the tissues of bats and their insect prey along this region. However, it is not clear whether bat activity and foraging behaviour have been affected. To assess possible effects of PCBs on bat activity and foraging behaviour, we measured the activity of little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus (LeConte, 1831)) and hoary bats (Lasiurus cinereus (Palisot de Beauvois, 1796)) along the upper Hudson River, as well as abundance of insect prey at the same locations. We also measured foraging duration and distances travelled by radio-tagged M. lucifugus. We found that bat activity and insect abundance did not differ with PCB concentration. We did, however, find that foraging behaviour along the Hudson River differed from a control site. Specifically, M. lucifugus foraging along PCB-contaminated areas of the Hudson River travelled shorter distances from their roosts and spent less time foraging than bats at an uncontaminated site. Our results show that while bats roost and forage in areas historically exposed to PCBs, this exposure has not adversely affected bat activity, foraging behaviour, or abundance of insect prey.
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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 | 0.001 | 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".