Hybridization between two high Arctic cetaceans confirmed by genomic analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract In 1990, a skull from a morphologically unusual Monodontid was found in West Greenland and collected for the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen. From its intermediate morphology, the skull was hypothesized to be a beluga/narwhal hybrid. If confirmed, the specimen would, to our knowledge, represent the sole evidence of hybridization between the only two toothed whale species endemic to the Arctic. Here we present genome-wide DNA sequence data from the specimen and investigate its origin using a genomic reference panel of eight belugas and eight narwhals. Our analyses reveal that the specimen is a male, first-generation hybrid between a female narwhal and a male beluga. We use stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis to investigate the dietary niche of the hybrid and find a higher δ13C value than in both belugas and narwhals, suggesting a foraging strategy unlike either parental species. These results further our understanding of the interaction between belugas and narwhals, and underscore the importance of natural history collections in monitoring changes in biodiversity. In addition, our study exemplifies how recent major advances in population genomic analyses using genotype likelihoods can provide key biological and ecological insights from low-coverage data (down to 0.05x).
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 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".