Assessing puma habitat suitability in Uruguay’s Grasslands: exploring source-sink dynamics and conservation implications
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Pumas (Puma concolor) have a broad geographic range across the Americas and are globally listed as Least Concern. However, in Uruguay’s Pampas Grasslands, they are considered Data Deficient and regionally endangered in Argentina and Brazil. Understanding the distribution and population status of pumas is crucial for their conservation. This study examines puma occurrence in Uruguay’s Grasslands within a regional context, assessing habitat suitability and recent land use changes. Using a Species Distribution Model (SDM) in MaxEnt with 224 occurrence records (1999–2011) and bioclimatic and topographic predictors, we found intermediate habitat suitability in the Pampas Grasslands, indicating a naturally sparse puma population. The highest suitability was along riverbanks and riparian areas. Recent land use changes have transformed suitable habitats into areas less likely to support pumas, affecting a significant portion of Uruguay’s land. Our results suggest source-sink dynamics, where Uruguayan puma records likely represent dispersing individuals from established subpopulations in Eastern Argentina and Southern Brazil.
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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 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 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".