New sightings of southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) in México: Citizen science and wildlife dispersion
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina) has a circumpolar distribution in the southern hemisphere. However, recent observations have documented this species in several locations across the northern hemisphere. With the integration of citizen science, we report 3 new records of this species in México. Photographs, videos, and information on elephant seals were collected with the collaboration of citizens (fishermen and photographers) on the Gulf of California and the southern Mexican Pacific coast. Data regarding the date, time, geographic location, and general behavior of the elephant seal were obtained from these sightings. The species, sex, and age category of the pinnipeds were identified based on external morphological characteristics. Three sightings of different southern elephant seal individuals were recorded on the Pacific Ocean coasts of México. In February 2021, a juvenile male was observed in Bahías de Huatulco, Oaxaca. In May 2022, a subadult male was sighted in San Jorge Bay, Sonora. In February 2023, another subadult male was observed in the Gulf of Santa Clara, Sonora. We documented 3 extralimital sightings of the southern elephant seal, with one being this species' northernmost record in the Pacific Ocean. These records contribute to our understanding of the dispersal patterns of southern elephant seals and highlight the importance of citizen science in advancing knowledge of marine mammal distributions.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".