Social and genetic relationships among individuals in urban kit fox social groups
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Smaller canids, such as most foxes, individually hunt small prey, and therefore, social groups typically consist of just a mated pair. However, these smaller canids occasionally form groups in which the members have been presumed to be genetically or socially related. We studied social and genetic relationships among urban San Joaquin kit fox ( Vulpes macrotis mutica Merriam, 1902) groups in Bakersfield, California. Of 59 groups, 42.4% had extra adults in addition to the parents. Foxes were field classified as either mothers, fathers, helpers (extra adults), or pups. We then assessed relatedness of foxes within social groups using 11 microsatellites in DNA from tissue or hair samples. Mated pairs were significantly less related than mothers and helpers, with fathers and helpers being intermediate. Twelve pairs of females were mother–daughter dyads, but we also found two cases of sisters and two cases where the females were unrelated. Pups were always related to a female identified as their mother. Father–pup pairs were less related than mother–pup pairs, with helper–pup pairs being intermediate. The extra-pair paternity rate (multiple fathers per litter) was 39%. The social flexibility exhibited by kit foxes may increase their resiliency to marked fluctuations in resource availability, thereby reducing extinction risk.
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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 | 0.001 | 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) | 0.001 | 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".