Tail breakage and predatory pressure upon two invasive snakes (Serpentes: Colubridae) at two islands in the Western Mediterranean
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Tail breakage is an important anti-predator mechanism in snake populations, which can be used as a proxy for predation intensity as natural observations of predator–prey interactions are scarce. Frequency of tail breakage was calculated for two Iberian colubrids recently introduced in the Balearic Islands (Western Mediterranean, Spain): the Horseshoe Whip Snake (Hemorrhois hippocrepis (Linnaeus, 1758)) in Eivissa and the Ladder Snake (Zamenis scalaris (Schinz, 1812)) in Formentera. The effect of sex, life stage, dorsal coloration pattern, body length, and body condition on frequency of tail breakage and on remaining subcaudal scale pairs were analyzed and compared between the indigenous range and the invaded islands. An increase of the frequency of tail breakage with body size was found, supporting a size-related effect, which also occurs in the indigenous range. Frequency of tail breakage of H. hippocrepis was lower in Eivissa when compared with the original area, whereas in Formentera, Z. scalaris showed a higher frequency, which could be related to the different predator community on each island compared with the mainland. The study of the main ecological aspects of these recently introduced species may allow one to assess their potential impact on insular ecosystems and their indigenous biodiversity, as well as to promote future control actions in these areas previously free of snakes.
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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 | 0.001 | 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) | 0.000 | 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".