Evolution of white-throated sparrow song: regional variation through shift in terminal strophe type and length
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We investigated the emergence over time of a novel song variant (doublet-ending song) in a western Canadian sub-population of white-throated sparrows; this variant differs from the species-typical, triplet-ending song. By analysing recent (1999–2014) and historic (1950/1960s) recordings, we show that populations west (British Columbia) and immediately east (Alberta) of the Rockies, and from central Canada (Ontario) initially all had triplet-ending songs. The shift to doublet-ending songs first arose west of the Rockies, and has increased immediately east of the Rockies in the last decade. The Ontario population retained predominantly triplet-ending songs. Note lengths have increased over time in all populations, while inter-strophe interval has decreased, allowing doublet-ending birds the ability to have greater strophe repeats for a given song length. We explore whether the emergence and apparent spread of the doublet-ending songs can be explained by cultural drift, or may be under selection by conveying an advantage during counter-singing.
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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 | 0.001 |
| 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".