Dentinal growth layer counts of captive, known-age, mother and daughter belugas (Delphinapterus leucas): confirming two growth layer groups (GLG/2) per year; consequences for recovery and management
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Captive mother and daughter belugas (Delphinapterus leucas) of Hudson Bay origin died at the Vancouver Aquarium, in November 2016, aged29.25 and 21.25 years. Aurora, captured at age three and captive since 1990, gave birth to Qila in 1995. Age and histories being known, the focusof this study was on total number of tooth growth layer groups (GLGs) present; one (GLG/1) or two (GLG/2) per year. Teeth from Aurora indicatedtwo growth layers per year (GLG/2) during pre-capture and captivity. Qila deposited GLG/2 throughout her captive life. Clearly an assumption ofGLG/1 over GLG/2 doubles the duration of all life stages, including lifespan and age at attainment of sexual maturity. Arguments for GLG/1 havebeen based on inferences (e.g. from fallout of bomb radio carbon) from adults of unknown age and history, while those for GLG/2 are based on theprojection of direct observations from newborn, known-age young to 21 and 29 year-old adults from captivity. Use of radiocarbon is ingenious butsuch analyses have not been rigorously tested on marine mammals and the sensitivity to necessary correction factors not addressed. The newinformation from this study contradicts the GLG/1 hypothesis in that such an assumption would place Aurora’s birth at the 1958 peak fallout ofbomb radiocarbon (14C) yet she was born 29 years later in 1987, while the birth of her daughter Qila would pre-date the birth of her mother by 13years. This paper re-assesses three studies that assigned GLG/1 based ages to older adults using GLG/2 and concludes that their supposed birthswould also pre-date the realistic births of their own mothers plus as many as two previous generations. Proponents of GLG/1 have overestimatedthe ages of previous calves-at-capture by 200–800%. Given the growth pattern in teeth of these 21 year and 29 year old female belugas, withincreasingly finer dentine GLGs deposited as the pulp tissue diminishes, it is difficult to envisage the GLG/1 tooth structures of those assumed tobe 60–80 years; none are as yet available. An holistic analysis using direct observations and cross-referenced parameters does not substantiateGLG/1which implies a 40% reduction of the intrinsic rate of natural increase; as a consequence, overestimating historical population size as wellas recovery target population and the predicted date of recovery in Cumberland Sound.
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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 | 0.001 | 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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".