Sexual dimorphism and alternative reproductive tactics in the Midland Painted Turtle (Chrysemys(picta(marginata)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The reproductive strategy of Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta) has been described as a combination of male courtship and female mate choice. However, in situ field observations from a long-term study of C. picta in Algonquin Provincial Park (Ontario, Canada) suggest that males also demonstrate coercive mating tactics. Males are equipped with prominent tomiodonts, tooth-like cusps of the upper jaw, which seemingly function in restraining mates and result in wounding to the head and neck of females. I propose that the tomiodonts of male C. picta serve as sexual weapons used to coerce females into mating. This thesis has two main objectives: 1) to describe the tomiodont morphology of C. picta, and 2) to test the functional significance of tomiodonts in the mating tactics of male C. picta. In Chapter I, I investigate the overall cranial morphology of C. picta with an emphasis on sexual dimorphism of the tomiodonts. I show that male C. picta have sexually size dimorphic tomiodonts with an optimized arrangement for biting and gripping. In Chapter II, I investigate the soft tissue wounding demographics of a C. picta population as these wounds relate to antagonistic sexual interactions. Using a 24-year dataset on wounding I show that large females experience the highest wounding probability and that elevated rates of wounding occur during the late summer breeding period. In Chapter III, I use behavioural trials during the spring and late summer reproductive seasons to evaluate male reproductive behaviour. I show that small males court females through titillation, whereas larger males employ coercive tactics, such as biting and forced submergence. My findings are contrary to the female choice mating system reported for C. picta and join a growing body of research demonstrating the importance of coercive tactics in the reproduction of male emydid turtles.
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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 | 0.001 | 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) | 0.002 | 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".