Major hurricanes affect body condition of American crocodile Crocodylus acutus inhabiting Mexican Caribbean islands
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Recent models suggest that anthropogenic global warming will lead to an increase in the number of major hurricanes, which have strong effects on ecosystems and may modify animal population characteristics. The goal of this study was to assess the body condition of American crocodiles Crocodylus acutus of Cozumel and Banco Chinchorro islands, Mexico, and use it as a tool to better understand short- and long-term effects of hurricanes on crocodilian populations. Changes in body condition (Fulton’s K) of 392 crocodiles, captured between 2003 and 2015, were assessed and analyzed in response to a major hurricane through different environmental factors. Differences among populations and size classes, and between sexes, together with seasonal variation, were also evaluated. The body condition of crocodiles was generally good, with better condition for Banco Chinchorro, suggesting that these populations and the ecosystems they inhabit are healthy. Body condition for hatchlings and adults was higher than for other classes, with adults exhibiting the best condition. Body condition of Banco Chinchorro individuals varied seasonally, responding to reproductive events and environmental parameter fluctuations. We also found that C. acutus body condition is sensitive to the passage of tropical cyclones, most likely through their effects on salinity, temperature, and prey availability. Tropical cyclones have a 2fold effect on populations. In the short-term, crocodile health is negatively affected by disturbance, while the species seems to maintain and improve its body condition over the longer term. An increase in strong tropical cyclone frequency could impede the recovery of populations, while causing a continual decrease in crocodile body condition.
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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".