Assessing space use in meadow voles: the relationship to reproduction and the stress axis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Voles are key mammals in understanding how social interactions can affect large-scale population processes. Previous studies have shown that at high population densities, meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus) have a lower proportion of breeding animals, higher average corticosterone levels, and can be limited by female territorial spacing. Based on this, we compared corticosterone levels and spatial use between breeding and nonbreeding free-ranging adult meadow voles within populations. We measured intrasexual spatial overlap to examine if breeding females minimize occupying the same areas as other females, and noninvasively assessed corticosterone levels using fecal corticosterone metabolites (FCMs). We found that female meadow voles have much lower intrasexual spatial overlap than males, even though both sexes have similar range sizes, and that females have generally higher FCM levels than males. However, breeding and nonbreeding females did not differ from one another in spatial use or in FCM levels. Conversely, reproductive classes of males differed greatly in all measures: nonbreeding males had FCM levels that were two times higher than those of breeding males, occupied a smaller range, and had lower spatial overlap, indicating they were moving less widely than breeding males. We additionally validated an enzyme immunoassay for noninvasively measuring FCMs in meadow voles. The assay was successful in detecting an increase in corticosterone stimulated by adrenocorticotropic hormone injection; however, dexamethasone did not induce negative feedback. FCMs reflect circulating corticosterone levels approximately 5 h prior. These results highlight differences in FCMs and spacing in meadow voles related to sex and reproductive status, and reflect the respective strategies males and females employ during the breeding season.
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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 | 0.000 | 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".