Effects of supplemental calcium on the growth rate of an insectivorous bird, the purple martin (<i>Progne subis</i>)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The calcium content of insects is postulated to be insufficient to meet the high demands of skeletal growth incurred by nestling insectivorous birds. To compensate for this calcium deficiency, adult birds commonly supplement the diet of their nestlings with objects rich in calcium, such as mollusk shells. This leads to the hypothesis that nestlings of species that have difficulty obtaining calcium-rich objects may suffer from calcium-limited growth rates. In this study, we experimentally tested whether supplemental calcium affected the growth rate of an aerial insectivore species with limited terrestrial mobility. We force-fed nestling purple martins (Progne subis) a calcium supplement and compared their growth rate to a control group. Calcium supplementation did not affect the growth rate of nestlings as measured by mass, primary feather length, tail feather length, wing bone length or tarsus length. The lack of effect was likely a result of martins feeding nestlings calcium-rich objects. We conclude that despite the terrestrial agility problems suspected to hinder aerial insectivores, they are capable of collecting calcium-rich objects, and that the growth rate of their young is not limited by a calcium-deficient diet.
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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 | 0.000 | 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".