Impact of Tusk Anomalies on the Long‐Term Foraging Ecology of Narwhals
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Male narwhals are unique in having a long, spiralled tusk, while females of the species do not have a tusk. However, a small number of individuals develop tusk anomalies, including two‐tusked males or females with a tusk. In this study, we combine genetic sexing and bone collagen stable isotope ( δ 13 C and δ 15 N) analysis to evaluate whether these tooth anomalies impact long‐term foraging ecology. Our analysis of individuals collected in the waters around Greenland showed no systematic impacts; eight of nine two‐tusked male narwhals and all three one‐tusked female narwhals fell within the normal range of known isotopic diversity from their source geographic regions. Two specimens with other forms of unusual dentition both showed stable isotope values outside the range of narwhals, suggesting that their diets were different. Therefore, the most common tusk anomalies in narwhals appear to have limited ecological consequences, while rarer forms of dentition are likely associated with altered foraging ecology.
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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 | 0.001 | 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".