Latitudinal gradient in cortisol concentrations in Canada lynx (<i>Lynx canadensis</i>) is not explained by diet
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Food limitation is an important stressor for most wildlife, and many specialist consumers will expand their dietary niche to contend with preferred prey limitation. How these dietary responses feed back into stress-axis regulation, however, is unknown. If alternative prey does not sufficiently fill the energetic requirements normally satisfied by preferred resources, then long-term glucocorticoid concentrations could be elevated in individuals consuming alternative prey. We measured cortisol concentrations and stable isotope ratios (δ13C and δ15N) in hair of Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis Kerr, 1792) across their distribution to determine the influence of diet on glucocorticoids while controlling for harvest location. We calculated the Euclidean distance between lynx and regional snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus Erxleben, 1777) stable isotope ratios as an index of diet specialization. We found no relationship between this index and cortisol, suggesting that prey types are interchangeable for lynx in terms of long-term stress axis activation. However, lynx cortisol increased significantly towards the northwestern region of lynx distribution, contrasting with our prediction, and highlighting important considerations for future research. This combination of glucocorticoid and diet analyses suggests that dietary plasticity does not necessarily alter an individual’s experience of potential stressors, despite important implications to population and community dynamics.
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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 | 0.000 | 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".