Habitat use and trophic ecology of the world’s rarest whale population on a rapidly warming subarctic foraging ground
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Historical commercial whaling has drastically reduced North Pacific right whale (NPRW) Eubalaena japonica populations, impeding our ecological understanding and highlighting the challenges of studying species impacted before scientific research began. The warming subarctic Bering Sea is the core summer feeding ground for the Critically Endangered eastern population of NPRW, yet knowledge about the species’ foraging ecology as well as distribution during other seasons remains scarce. By modeling isotope values of NPRW skin, we revealed spring distribution and physiological responses of NPRW to ocean warming and sea ice retreat. Our findings confirm that NPRW are secondary consumers and indicate that the remnant population primarily feeds in the coastal Gulf of Alaska and Pacific subarctic gyres in spring, aligning with historical records. Joint attribute modeling of whale amino acid isotope values demonstrates their ability to track baseline environmental shifts. Moreover, we observed evidence for changes in NPRW physiology and habitat use related to sea ice, including feeding north of the whales’ Critical Habitat. These insights can inform recovery strategies for the NPRW, and the methodologies are translatable to other rare species as environmental conditions rapidly change.
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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 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 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) | 0.001 | 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".