Relative Abundance and Diet of Spiny Softshells (<i>Apalone spinifera</i>) in a Lake Erie Population
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Populations of the Spiny Softshell (Apalone spinifera) in the Great Lakes are of conservation concern despite being secure elsewhere in their North American range. We examined the relative abundance of Spiny Softshells among the turtle fauna at Presque Isle, a peninsula on the Pennsylvania shoreline of Lake Erie. We also compared male and female diets to determine the presence of invasive Zebra and Quagga Mussels (Dreissena spp.). The Spiny Softshell was the fifth most common of six turtle species captured (2% of captures). in the peninsula’s largest bay there was a significant increase in capture rate and proportion of Spiny Softshell captures in late summer (5% of five species of turtles) compared to early summer (3% of all turtles). Recapture was considerably lower for Spiny Softshells (5%) than for four other turtle species suggesting that either its relative abundance is higher than trapping data indicate or that they are a mobile species with less habitat fidelity than other residents. Prey from fecal samples were quantified using an index of Relative importance (iRi). Males (n = 26) ate primarily unidentified insects (iRi = 59), followed by algal stalks (iRi = 35) and caddisfly larvae (iRi = 4). Females (n = 5) ate primarily algal stalks (iRi = 54), followed by crayfish (iRi = 22) and fish (iRi = 19). only two turtles, one male and one female, passedZebra and Quagga Mussels in fecal samples, thus Spiny Softshells do not appear to make significant use of these invasive molluscs.
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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) | 0.001 | 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".