Preliminary study of gull (Laridae) scavenging and dispersal of vertebrate remains, Shoals Marine Laboratory, Coastal New England
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The taphonomic effects of avian taxa upon forensic scenes has been little researched, and shore species including gulls (Laridae) have received even less attention, despite their well-known behavior as scavengers of human food waste. In order to begin assessing their potential impact, a pilot study was undertaken on Appledore Island, Maine, USA, at the Shoals Marine Laboratory. This location was chosen for its isolation from most other vertebrate scavengers and its large, seasonal breeding colonies of gulls, primarily great black-backed (Larus marinus) and herring (L. argentatus) gulls. Two locations with fresh bones were monitored for scavenging activity, using trail cameras and Tile Mate® tracking chips. In addition, portions of the breeding colonies nesting areas along the rocky coast were surveyed for bones that must have derived at some distance from human-generated trash sources. All (n = 16) fresh bones underwent dispersal by gulls, with an average distance of 10 m and a maximum distance (in one case) of 85 m. Multiple bones from trash sources were transported a minimum of 150 m if locally acquired and a minimum of 10 km if acquired from the mainland. These bones had a maximum length of 192 mm and mass of 46.0 g. Gulls, with their global distribution, have the potential to be significant dispersers of human skeletal remains and should undergo additional taphonomic research.
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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 | 0.003 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 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) | 0.000 | 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 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".