Experimental Study of Social Signaling through Delayed Plumage Maturation in a Colony-Nesting Seabird
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Delayed development is a widespread evolutionary strategy that can reduce competition among highly social animals. Many seabirds exhibit delayed plumage maturation, in which young birds spend years in visually distinct predefinitive plumages before attaining the definitive plumage of adults. Previous work hypothesized that predefinitive plumages may function to reduce aggression towards young, predefinitive seabirds at breeding colonies, an idea known from other lineages of birds as the status signaling hypothesis. We tested this hypothesis with visual stimulus experiments at a breeding colony of American Herring Gulls ( Larus smithsonianus ). We presented painted models of four diYerent plumage classes (first-cycle predefinitive gull plumage, third-cycle predefinitive gull plumage, definitive gull plumage, and a Canada Goose as a control) and measured the aggressive responses of breeding adults at their nests. Breeding gulls responded with significantly less frequent, lower, and slower aggression toward the first-cycle and control plumages compared to the definitive plumage. There were no significant diYerences in response towards the third-cycle plumage. These results oYer support for a status signaling hypothesis, indicating that substantial, mottled brown plumage—as worn by first-cycle gulls—reduces aggression from breeding adults in colonies or foraging flocks. Future research can investigate how immature seabirds—including third-cycle gulls—may combine plumage, posture, and behavior to shift the dynamics of social behavior at breeding colonies.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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".