Mercury exposure to swallows breeding in Canada inferred from feathers grown on breeding and non-breeding grounds
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Aerial insectivorous birds such as swallows have been the steepest declining groups of birds in North America over the last 50 years but whether such declines are linked to contaminants has not been examined. We sampled feathers from five species of swallow at multiple locations to assess total mercury [THg] exposure for adults during the non-breeding season, and for juveniles on the breeding grounds. We assessed Hg exposure to juvenile birds in crop- and grass-dominated landscapes to determine if land-use practices influenced feather [THg]. We assayed feathers for stable isotopes (δ2H, δ13C, δ15N) as proxies for relative habitat use and diet to determine their potential influence on feather [THg]. Feather [THg] was highest in adult bank swallows (Riparia riparia) and purple martins (Progne subis) from Saskatchewan and adult cliff swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) from western regions, indicating differential exposure to Hg on the non-breeding grounds. Juvenile bank, barn (Hirundo rustica) and tree (Tachycineta bicolor) swallows had lower feather [THg] in crop-dominated landscapes than grass-dominated landscapes in Saskatchewan, potentially resulting from lower use of wetland-derived insects due to wetland drainage and intensive agriculture. Feather [THg] was related to juvenile feather stable isotopes for several species, suggesting complex interactions with diet and environmental factors. Many individuals had feather [THg] values >2 µg/g, a threshold at which deleterious effects may occur. Our findings indicate differential Hg exposure among species of swallow, regions and land-uses and highlight the need for additional research to determine dietary and finer-scale land-use impacts on individual species and populations.
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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 | 0.000 | 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 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".