Hematological plasticity in House Sparrow populations in the Western Himalayas suggests recent range expansion to higher elevations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Organisms encounter significant challenges at high elevations because of hypoxic conditions. Therefore, exploring the physiological responses of organisms in these environments provides valuable insights into their adaptive strategies and evolutionary history. Contrary to expectations, species with long-term high-elevation ancestry exhibit reduced hematological plasticity, attributed to changes in the O2-transport pathway involving gene level modifications. Drawing comparisons with such species, this study examined the influence of hypoxic conditions on hemoglobin concentrations and hematocrit levels in House Sparrow Passer domesticus populations. We tested for these physiological responses in the House Sparrows (n = 97) occurring along two elevational gradients ranging from 200 m to 3900 m in the Western Himalayas of northern India. Our findings revealed that the mean hemoglobin concentration and hematocrit levels in sparrows were significantly different across the elevations with sparrows at high elevation (Hb: 20.9 ± 1.3 g/dL; Hct: 59.7 ± 6.8 %) having significantly higher hemoglobin and hematocrit levels from that in the low (Hb: 18.4 ± 1.2 g/dL; Hct: 50.0 ± 3.4 %) and mid elevations (Hb: 18.4 ± 1.0 g/dL; Hct: 51.1 ± 5.3 %; Hb: F = 59.8, p < 0.05; Hct: F = 35.74, p < 0.05). These findings indicate that House Sparrows show significant physiological changes to cope with hypoxic conditions at elevations above 3000 meters, potentially associated with recent population expansion into these challenging environments.
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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 | 0.000 |
| 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".