Quantifying rosy-finch migration with stable hydrogen isotope feather markers highlights the need for inter-state collaboration to reach conservation goals
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Black Rosy-Finch Leucosticte atrata is a species of conservation concern because their alpine breeding habitat is threatened by climate change and their population size is relatively small. Rosy-finches are notoriously difficult to study and information gaps include migratory connectivity across their range. In Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming, Black Rosy-Finches can be found throughout the year and it is unknown if these populations are short-distance altitudinal migrants or are traveling to and from other regions. Understanding a species’ full annual cycle can improve conservation and management between states and management entities. To understand migration patterns, we measured stable hydrogen isotopes from feathers of Black Rosy-Finches that were using three mountain sites in Utah during the non-breeding season. Samples from Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches Leucosticte tephrocotis were also included to support validation of methods. From each sample, we produced odds of origin surfaces that allowed us to summarize the distance and direction traveled between the location where feathers were formed and their collection site during the non-breeding season. Stable hydrogen isotope values of feather samples from 38 Black Rosy-Finches ranged -113.71‰ to -37.03‰ and probable breeding-season origins of these birds included central Idaho, southwestern Montana, western Wyoming, and the Uinta Mountains of Utah. Black Rosy-Finches traveled on average (median) 428 km between breeding and non-breeding locations. These results suggest that northern Utah’s wintering Black Rosy-Finches migrate regionally between breeding and non-breeding sites rather than making local-scale altitudinal migrations from nearby breeding sites within Utah. Managers and conservationists across state boundaries need to ensure they are providing habitat resources to sustain Black Rosy-Finches across the annual cycle.
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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 | 0.009 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".