Costs and benefits of straight versus tortuous migration paths for Prairie Rattlesnakes (<i>Crotalus viridis viridis</i>) in seminatural and human-dominated landscapes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
An individual’s migration path shape should affect its fitness, because patchily distributed features (e.g., prey) are encountered more often on straight than tortuous paths. We hypothesized that Prairie Rattlesnakes (Crotalus viridis viridis (Rafinesque, 1818)) with straighter migration paths should have better body condition, because they encounter prey patches more frequently, and higher migration mortality, because they also encounter predators and hazardous human land uses more frequently, than individuals with tortuous paths. If true, then a straighter path should be favoured when the benefit (resource acquisition) outweighs the cost (mortality risk). Humans pose a significant mortality risk for migrants; thus, the cost of straight-line movement should increase relative to the benefit in more human-dominated landscapes, favouring more tortuous movements. We tested these hypotheses using data on the body condition, mortality, and migration movements of 25 female Prairie Rattlesnakes in one human-dominated and one seminatural landscape. As hypothesized, we found better body condition and higher migration mortality for snakes with straighter migration paths, and that snakes followed more tortuous paths in the human-dominated landscape. Although selection for tortuous movements may reduce rates of migration mortality in human-dominated landscapes, this may ultimately contribute to population declines if poorer body condition reduces overwinter survival or reproductive success.
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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 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".