Torpor may facilitate opportunistic predation of live-trapped small mammals: a cautionary note
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Small mammals are often key components in ecological monitoring programs, and live trapping is often used to obtain small mammal density estimates or other metrics. However, an aspect of such trapping that has received little attention is opportunistic predation of captured animals. Here, we report a Common Raven (Corvus corax) preying on a deermouse (Peromyscus spp.) after it was released from a live trap. The mouse was torpid when removed from the trap. The raven preyed on the deermouse right after it was released, likely because the mouse had not yet fully aroused from torpor and was not able to find adequate shelter or evade the raven. Best practices to avoid similar occurrences include passively warming the animal before releasing it or returning it to the trap to arouse from torpor in safety. Our observation further highlights the need for researchers to be vigilant about opportunistic predation of small mammals captured and released from live traps and to take actions to mitigate the risk, especially if the mammals are exhibiting signs of torpor.
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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 | 0.004 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
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".