Richardson’s ground squirrels (<i>Urocitellus richardsonii</i>) are associated primarily with intermediate levels of grassland, clay loam soils, and human development in Canadian mixed-grass prairies
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Richardson’s ground squirrel (Urocitellus richardsonii (Sabine, 1822)) is a widespread burrowing mammal on the northern Great Plains. This species is a prominent prey item for a variety of predators and its burrows provide important habitat for other wildlife; however, Richardson’s ground squirrel is also considered an economically damaging agricultural pest. Despite the ecological importance of Richardson’s ground squirrels and their status as pests, there are gaps in our knowledge about large-scale habitat associations for this species. In 2011 and 2012, we conducted 1840 roadside surveys in a 130 000 km2 area of southern Saskatchewan, Canada, to understand which habitat features are associated with Richardson’s ground squirrel occurrence. Ground squirrels were observed on 8% of the surveys. Probability of ground squirrel occurrence was highest in areas with moderate amounts of grassland (approximately 30%), areas that were developed by humans (>30%), and had a high proportion of clay loam soils, presumably for burrowing. Our study highlights the importance of heterogeneous landscapes and that areas disturbed by humans may provide suitable vegetation structure for ground squirrels. This information can help to identify important habitat for species that rely on Richardson’s ground squirrels and identify areas where Richardson’s ground squirrels could come into conflict with agriculture.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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".