Stream Temperature Regimes and the Distribution of the Rocky Mountain Tailed Frog at Its Northern Range Limit, Southeastern British Columbia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Stream temperature is one of the most important physical parameters affecting growth and development of amphibians, especially cold-adapted stream dwelling amphibians such as tailed frogs. We characterized the annual thermal regime of streams at the northern range of the Rocky Mountain tailed frog (Ascaphus montanus) and associated it with tailed frog distribution and biomass. We monitored stream temperatures between August 2008 and August 2009 at 41 sites ranging from small headwater streams to larger valley bottom streams. At a subset of these sites (n = 27), we collected tailed frog abundance and biomass estimates. Two temperature metrics, maximum weekly average temperature (MWAT) and accumulated degree days > 5 °C (DD5), a measure of physiological time, were related to tailed frog occurrence and abundance. Larval occurrence was found to be limited when DD5 was ≤ 160 °C and MWAT ≤ 8 °C. No breeding streams were too warm to support tailed frogs. Frogs and tadpoles had similar realized niche centres for both MWAT (about 10.8 °C ) and DD5 (about 355 °C ). However, frogs had greater realized niche widths than tadpoles. The temperature metrics were only weakly related to catchment-scale variables (area, mean elevation, ruggedness, aspect, site elevation), such that catchment scale variables cannot be used to make reliable predictions of thermal habitat suitability. This study provides a greater understanding of the thermal conditions required for tailed frog occurrence and may help managers predict potential range shifts resulting from climate change or land use and more effectively conserve tailed frogs into the future.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 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) | 0.002 | 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".