An examination of mercury concentrations in eggshells of the common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina) in Nova Scotia, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mercury (Hg) is a potentially toxic metal that has bioaccumulating and biomagnifying properties. In egg laying animals, it can be transferred from an adult female to offspring. However, in turtles, the inter-and-intra-nest variation of Hg concentrations remains unknown. We investigated the concentration of Hg in preyed-upon Common Snapping Turtles (Chelydra serpentina) eggshells. The variability in Hg contamination between and within each nest was assessed. In June 2021, 368 eggshells left behind by predators were sampled from 14 nests, from three different sites in southwest Nova Scotia. Ten eggshells were randomly selected from each nest for analysis. We found no correlation between estimated number of eggs in a nest and average nest Hg concentration. Significant inter-nest variation (Hg ranging from 12.0 ± 3.85 to 172.3 ± 43.9 µg/kg) and intra-nest variability may indicate maternal transfer. The collection of the shells of freshly preyed- upon eggs is a useful non-destructive sampling technique to maintain sustainable turtle populations. Our results demonstrate the need for further investigation into the impact of Hg on temperate, freshwater turtle reproduction. Keywords: mercury concentration, maternal transfer, common snapping turtle, eggshells
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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) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 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".