Red squirrel gestation length is unchanged by maternal traits, litter composition, or future food availability
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Despite considerable research on reproductive timing, factors influencing intraspecific variation in gestation length in wild mammals have received limited attention, largely due to a lack of high-resolution data. We examined potential drivers of gestation length variation in a wild population of North American red squirrels ( Tamiasciurus hudsonicus Erxleben, 1777) in Yukon, Canada. Drawing on 27 years of conception and parturition data, we found that gestation length was highly conserved, with minimal variation (35.4 ± 1.49 days; mean ± standard deviation). Gestation length was unaffected by maternal age, litter size, or litter sex ratio. Likewise, the anticipation of an upcoming food pulse, caused by synchronous conifer seed masting, had no statistically significant influence on gestation length. This finding stands in contrast to other reproductive traits in red squirrels, which are known to shift in response to food pulses. Overall, our results suggest that gestation length in red squirrels is buffered against environmental variability, likely due to stabilizing selection or strong heritability.
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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 | 0.000 | 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".