Nest mites (<i>Pellonyssus reedi</i>) and the reproductive biology of the house finch (<i>Carpodacus mexicanus</i>)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We investigated the effects of a hematophagous nestling mite (Pellonyssus reedi, Acari: Macronyssidae) on the reproductive biology of the house finch (Carpodacus mexicanus) in east-central Alabama, U.S.A. Mites were absent from nests for the first half of the breeding season, but after their initial appearance they increased in number and were present in almost all nests. High nest-mite levels were associated with decreased nestling mass and hematocrit, but not with decreased nestling tarsus length. Experimental elimination of mites from some nests confirmed that the effects observed were mite-induced, not seasonal. The plumage colour of breeding adult male house finches was not correlated with nest-mite levels, nor did it appear that redder males' offspring suffered less from the effects of mites. Adult house finches fed nestlings from highly parasitized nests less often than those from nests with few or no mites. It appears unlikely that mites are directly involved in the sexual selection of bright male plumage coloration in this population of house finches. However, it is known that early-nesting females preferentially pair with redder males, therefore the benefit of nesting early and avoiding mite infestations is greater for redder male house finches.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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 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".