A modern stocktake of ‘a not-so-common possum’: recent and unpublished records of the common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) in arid north-west Western Australia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) is a medium-sized marsupial that was formerly widespread across Australia, but has suffered extensive declines in its range and population size, with significant loss in semi-arid/arid areas. In the northern semi-arid/arid areas in Western Australia (WA), little is known about the density and distribution of brushtail possum populations. Here, we report on modern and unpublished records of brushtail possums in north-west WA, focusing on the Pilbara region. Records were sourced from various agencies and online sources. Prior to this study, only 13 records from the mainland Pilbara Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation of Australia (IBRA) bioregion were publicly available. We uncovered 47 additional independent records, with 35 records since 2000, indicating that brushtail possums are persisting in low densities in the Pilbara bioregion. Most Pilbara possum records we found were located in riverine and rocky environments, correlating to environments that include caves and large Eucalyptus sp. The capture of these data fills an important information gap that will now be available in public data repositories. We recommend that targeted surveys and follow-up monitoring be conducted in northern WA to determine whether brushtail possums are declining in this region, as has been found elsewhere in northern and central Australia.
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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 | 0.002 |
| 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 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 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".