Morphological criteria for staging near-hatching embryos of the domesticated Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) and Swan Goose (Anser cygnoides)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Studying waterfowl embryology necessitates reliable and precise staging tables. These are descriptions of embryonic features throughout development from fertilisation to hatching stage, which are used to approximate the extent of embryonic development. Waterfowl staging tables have previously been established based on morphological features from fertilisation to approximately ten days before hatching. Embryonic changes over the final ten days of pre-hatching development have also been documented and proposed as useful staging criteria. However, the reliability of these changes as useful staging criteria across different waterfowl breeds has not been fully examined. To examine the reliability of these criteria, which focus on size changes of the bill and middle toes, for staging near-hatching embryos, we examined twenty-seven Mallard and Swan Geese embryos and measured their beak and toe-length sizes. We compared our results with previously published data, and found that size variation across breeds within the same developmental stage is equivalent to within-breed variation across different stages, suggesting limited reliability of beak and middle toe length sizes for staging waterfowl embryos. Consequently, we devised novel staging criteria for waterfowl based on four easily measurable morphological traits and show that these criteria allow correct stage identification with over 70% accuracy. Our results highlight the importance of quantifying accuracy for developing reliable embryonic staging tables.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 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".