Splitting hares: Current and future ecological niches predicted as distinctly different for two congeneric lagomorphs
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The congeneric lagomorphs Lepus timidus and L. europaeus share allopatric distributions in many areas of Europe characterised by competitive exclusion and hybridisation. We investigated prospects for these species under climate change in northern England uplands. We created ensemble models predicting niche realisation for these species, influenced by abiotic and biotic factors, estimating niche overlap in geo-environmental space. The two species occupy distinctly different niches, influenced more by vegetation preferences than climatic differences. The current climate niche for L. timidus featured higher elevations with cooler temperatures and 168 km2 range extent. Its current habitat niche scale was larger at 269 km2, comprised entirely of upland dwarf shrubs: heather, cotton grass, moorland grasses. By contrast, the current climate niche predicted L. europaeus occupying lowland areas with a milder climate and range extent of 252 km2. Its current habitat niche was also greater, 401 km2, being mostly improved grassland. Competition was presently limited. The current niche predictions showed very little geographic overlap between the species. Niche overlap measured by Schoener Index was low: current climate niche 0.16; current habitat niche 0.07. The future climate niches for 2050 (IPCC RCP2.6), predicted L. timidus range contracting to 19 km2, on hilltops and L. europaeus range expanding to 765 km2. Consequently L. timidus range would be wholly within the L. europaeus range. In many contact zones throughout Europe, L. europaeus outcompetes L. timidus; however, in the Peak District their distributions are largely distinct. Future replacement of L. timidus by L. europaeus may be engendered by dietary convergence, should a warmer climate cause a transition of upland dwarf shrub vegetation to grasses.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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 | 0.001 | 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".