Pregnancy rate and early lamb surviaval of California bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis californiana, Douglas 1871) in the Ashnola watershed, British Columbia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Flatiron Mountain population of bighorn sheep [Ovis canadensis], with a history of low lamb recruitment, was studied to determine the timing of offspring losses, the nutritional and disease status of females, and the significance of suckling behaviour, weather, and predation on lamb survival. Pregnancy fate, determined by Doppler ultrasound diagnoses, was 100% in 10 adult females captured in mid to late gestation. Mortality of lambs belonging to tagged females was 64%, all occurring in the first month postpartum. Of the five females that were observable throughout the lambing period, three lost their offspring when the lamb was between five and 21 days old. Adult females from Flatiron Mountain were heavier and had higher body condition scores than a captive research herd with higher lamb production, suggesting energy status of Flatiron females was sufficient for lamb survival. Concentrations of selenium, copper, and zinc in the blood serum of Flatiron females in winter were marginally deficient, based on domestic sheep values. The one 9-month old lamb captured had very low levels of some blood minerals. Liver and kidney concentrations suggest that selenium in adult males was the only trace mineral marginally deficient in this population. The only important pathogen isolated from nasal swabs was parainfluenza type-3 virus, which was found in 50% of the 12 females sampled in late winter. Although several storms involving freezing temperatures and snowfall occurred during the lambing period, females with newborn lambs frequented lower elevations characterized by a milder microclimate, and there was no obvious correlation between inclement weather and periods of high lamb mortality. The suckling behaviour of Flatiron lambs was similar to that of other populations which, on average, had double the lamb production of Flatiron females. Analysis of predator scats, mainly coyote, revealed 24% by volume of their spring diet consisted of bighorn lambs. Based on the lack of significant nutritional, disease, or climatic factors, and considering the timing of lamb losses, coyote predation was hypothesized to be the most likely factor limiting lamb survival on Flatiron Mountain. Research effort should be directed towards testing this conclusion before management prescriptions are applied.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 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) | 0.001 | 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".