Ethnozoological Review on the Trade, Human Alimentation, and Cultural Use of Skinks (Reptilia, Scincidae)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Animals and their derivatives have been used for a wide range of purposes, including human consumption, clothing, tools, medicinal and magical-religious purposes, for most of human history, and as pets more recently. We reviewed the scientific literature and, using 134 references, provided an overview of how 400 species of skinks (23% of skink diversity) are used in the context of ethnozoology, especially as related to international and domestic trade and any cultural significance. Except for 10 species, all records of skinks involve domestic or international trade. Body weight, various activity pattern traits, and various microhabitats were found to be positive predictors of documented human use. In contrast, species found in less accessible microhabitats, such as semi-aquatic species, showed reduced odds of an ethnozoological role. A more comprehensive examination of trading patterns, cultural significance, or any other human use of skinks currently appears to be impossible, simply due to a lack of necessary information. In addition, data related to functional traits of skinks or a general understanding about the factors that influence skink usage or cultural significance are scarce or absent. We conclude that our understanding of factors that may influence human use of lizards in general and skinks in particular needs to be improved to create more effective species conservation and environmental education outcomes.
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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) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".