No Support for a Genetic Basis of Mandible Crossing Direction in Crossbills (Loxia SPP)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Unusual among birds, the bill tips in crossbills (Loxia spp.) overlap in the vertical plane, with the tip of the lower mandible to either the left or right of the tip of the upper mandible when viewed from above. Patterns observed in wild populations and experimental foraging data suggest that a 1:1 ratio of left- to right-crossing individuals is maintained by frequency-dependent natural selection in some populations, and that genetic drift causes deviation from a 1:1 ratio in other populations. Both processes require a genetic basis for this remarkable polymorphism, yet few data are available that address whether, and how, mandible crossing direction is heritable. To test for a genetic basis of this trait (single or quantitative, autosomal or sex-linked), we analyzed resemblance in mandible crossing direction between related captive-bred individuals of several crossbill taxa with standard statistical techniques as well as modern animal model methodology. Surprisingly, we did not find statistically significant support for a genetic basis of mandible crossing direction. Comparisons of the ratio of left- to right-crossing males and females in wild populations also did not support a sex-linked quantitative genetic basis. We conclude that mandible crossing direction may have uncharacteristically low heritability, but we cannot rule out that it is nongenetically determined. La Dirección de Cruzamiento de la Mandíbula en las Especies de Loxia no Presenta Base Genética
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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 | 0.001 |
| 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 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".