The Erosion of Threatened Southern Mountain Caribou Migration
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Migration enables animals to access seasonally and spatially varying resources, resulting in greater abundance compared to analogous non-migratory wildlife. Both Western science and Indigenous knowledge recognize the critical role of migration in sustaining wildlife; yet these movements are increasingly disrupted by human activity worldwide. Despite their importance, long-term changes in migratory patterns for large mammals remain challenging to quantify. Therefore, to address this gap, we analyzed 35 years (1987-2022) of telemetry data for southern mountain caribou (n = 2967 animal-years), a threatened population that typically exhibits two main types of annual migration. The first type is a single horizontal migration between summer and winter ranges, while the second is a twice-per-year vertical migration between high and low elevations. We studied the extent and type of migration, changes through time, and determined if these changes correlated with landscape disturbance or shifts in weather. Our results show that caribou reduced their migratory duration (2-3 days/decade), distance (6-8 km/decade or 15%-25%) and elevation change (120-150 m/decade or 7%-23% for elevational migrants). The subpopulations of caribou adapted to extreme snow depths conducted a unique elevational migration twice a year, which is globally distinctive among ungulates. However, this elevational migration is diminishing in distance and elevation. The changes in elevational and horizontal migration correlated with increased human disturbance, especially of low-elevation winter ranges. Changes in weather did not appear to be a major driver of the migratory declines. Declines in migratory behaviour occurred concomitantly with population declines and increases in disturbance, and these processes are likely intertwined. The rapid loss of these unique migrations is a significant conservation concern that could have irreversible consequences for the social transmission of fitness-maximizing behaviors.
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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 | 0.000 | 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".