The underwater vocal complexity of seals (Phocidae) is not related to their phylogeny
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Closely related mammalian species often make similar vocalizations, but this is not so with the underwater calls of the true seals. Some seal species have diverse underwater vocal repertoires, whereas others only make pulsed calls. Vocal complexity scores of underwater calls of 13 seal species were compared with their phylogeny and life-history traits. Waveform types, repertoire sizes, repetition and rhythm patterns, and frequency and duration measures (15 attributes, scaled 0 to 1) were summed to give a vocal complexity score. The lowest complexity group use low frequency, burst pulse or irregular waveforms and have small repertoires. The intermediate group have both sinusoidal and noisy waveforms, songs, and a single rhythm pattern in repeated element calls. The most complex group have large repertoires, sinusoidal and noisy waveforms, songs, and two or more rhythm patterns in repeated element calls. There is no evidence of a relationship between phylogeny and vocal complexity. The low vocal complexity species are serially monogamous, do not form breeding groups, breed on beaches or pack ice, and are subject to higher predation risk. Species with higher vocal complexity are promiscuous or polygamous, form breeding groups on pack or landfast ice, and have a lower predation risk.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".