The socio-ecological functions of fossoriality in a group-living carnivore, the European badger (Meles meles)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis examines the role played by den use in socio-ecology, especially in leveraging group formation (i.e., the Fossorial Benefits Hypothesis; FBH), using badgers as a model species. In particular, I benefit from recent technological developments, facilitating detailed measurements of activity, energetic expenditure, ranging behaviour, and underground localisation, enabling the examination of hitherto intractable facets of badger socio-ecology, allowing a comprehensive investigation. Group-living is theorised to evolve when the benefits of living with conspecifics outweigh the costs. While pack hunting, and allo-parenting play a specific role in fostering communal living, I demonstrate in Part I that continued cohabitation at natal dens can often acts as a precursive mechanism initiating cohabitation, that can persists into adulthood among small, omnivorous/insectivorous, den-using carnivores. In this context, I then consider the implications of delayed dispersal and reproductive suppression. This provides an evolutionary basis linking fossoriality and group-living in the Carnivora, where sociality is, in part, explained by burrow-dwelling. Part II establishes that the energetic benefits of using fossorial dens as refugia from adverse weather provide a functional basis for persistent co-occupation of a common den by conspecifics. Badgers use setts strategically, with reference to their body-condition and their imperative to forage, to reduce energy expenditure and optimise their capacity for achieving minimal food security. This section also considers how badgers may compensate for ongoing rapid climate change. Part III demonstrates that cohabitation at dens does not infer group collaboration or social structure; individuals may still act independently. Nevertheless, burrow use patterns were coordinated between badger group members, evidencing that dens act as social foci. Collectively these lines of evidence support the FBH as a playing a causal role promoting spatial group formation and a complementary role driving persistent benefits of group-living in suitable resource-scapes; resulting in 'spatial' though not necessarily 'social' -groups.
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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 | 0.001 | 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".