Epigenetic variations in non-metric skull traits in american mink (<i>Neogale vison</i> Schreber, Carnivora, Mustelidae) strains after selecting for defensive behavioral characters
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The occurrence of discrete non-metric threshold traits (NTTs) of the axial skull and mandible was studied among strains of aggressive and tame American minks (Neogale vison Schreber, 1777), obtained after selecting for characters of defensive behavior at an experimental fur farm. Non-selected caged and wild Canadian minks were taken as control groups. After culling the NTTs with invariant frequencies, unclear topologies, single, rare (< 5%) and high-frequency (> 95%), three variants in the array of traits were used: “expanded” (50 traits), allowing for their connection with gender and size, “constrained” (30), excluding such a connection, and “combined” by gender (50), where the frequencies of males are only taken for sex-related traits. An assessment of the mean measures of divergence (MMD) based on the occurrence of NTT phenes in all variants revealed significant differences between the strains, as well as both control groups. In the first variant, the differences between the sexes were most pronounced, vs between the strains in the second and third. In all variants, aggressive and tame minks differed to the maximum degree, whereas the caged non-selected individuals occupied an intermediate position. When comparing samples, wild Canadian minks are the closest to caged non-selected minks, the divergence between aggressive and tame exceeding the difference between cage and wild. Canonical analysis of the principal components characterizing the manifestation of individual phenological compositions for a constrained separable set of 30 NTTs (with lower environmental and greater hereditary conditionality) revealed the same intergroup differences as on the basis of MMD. The effect of selection based on characters of defensive behavior for 16–17 generations was found to be accompanied by a greater differentiation of aggressive and tame American minks than wild and caged ones as a result of their almost century long isolation of the latter in fur farms. The values of the indices of epigenetic variability (EV) and the volume of within-group morphospace (Vm) characterizing the degree of destabilization of development, are significantly higher in tame minks than in aggressive ones. The results are in good agreement with Belyaev’s theory of destabilizing selection and indirectly indicate a high rate of epigenetic changes in experimental strains of the American mink, which explains the high adaptive potential of this invasive species during its range expansion in Eurasia.
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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".