The biogeography of home range size of woodland caribou <i>Rangifer tarandus caribou</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Aim Population‐limiting factors represent the core of conservation biology. Because animal space use is affected by ecological constraints that can vary among populations, limiting factors might be revealed from intraspecific variation in home range size. We evaluated biogeographic variation in the home range size of woodland caribou ( Rangifer tarandus caribou ), a threatened species inhabiting the boreal forest, in relation to land cover, topography, snowcover and disturbance across the species’ range. Location Twenty‐five populations in Canada, spanning the contiguous boreal forest (an east–west extent of 4,400 km), including the southern fringe of the species’ range, adjacent to a broad region of extirpation. Methods We compiled the average annual home range size of adult female caribou (5–68 home ranges per population) and 18 putative predictor variables in each population range. We uncovered major gradients using principal components analysis and then evaluated models of home range size using multiple regression, with orthogonal variables representing vegetation, human disturbance and snowcover. Results Average home range size varied 28‐fold among populations (range: 312–8,838 km 2 ). Home range area was most strongly and negatively correlated with anthropogenic disturbance in the population range ( R 2 = 0.391), a variable in all seven top models (Δ AIC c ≤ 5.99). Among populations, where human disturbance in the population range was low (≤10%), mean home range sizes consistently exceeded 1,400 km 2 . Conversely, where human disturbance was high (>55%), especially at the species’ southern range margin, mean home range sizes did not exceed 1,500 km 2 . Main Conclusions In the boreal forest, female caribou may constrict their home ranges amid human‐caused disturbances. We speculate that smaller home ranges may lower the risk of encounter by predators, a key limiting factor. Among populations, smaller home ranges may serve as a signal of anthropogenic habitat loss.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| 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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".