Burrow Persistence and Spatial Distribution of Federally and State‐Protected Gopher Tortoise ( <i>Gopherus polyphemus</i> ) Populations in Southwest Alabama
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT The gopher tortoise ( Gopherus polyphemus ) is an ecosystem engineer and keystone species that has experienced population declines of roughly 80% over the past century due to human‐induced habitat loss. In the state of Alabama, the gopher tortoise was designated as a federally threatened species by the US Fish and Wildlife Service west of the Mobile–Tombigbee River (e.g., Mobile County) in 1987. East of the Mobile–Tombigbee River (e.g., Baldwin County), the gopher tortoise is protected only by state agencies. In this case study, we investigate the persistence of localized gopher tortoise populations in federally protected (Mobile) and federally unprotected (Baldwin) counties across a 28‐year period from initial surveys in 1991–1992 to our recent survey in 2018–2020. In addition, we use GIS modeling and 597 burrow coordinates to develop a novel approach to mapping the potential suitable habitat availability in Mobile and Baldwin counties. Our survey results indicate that gopher tortoise populations have declined in both counties since 1991–92, with populations persisting at ~59% of sites in Mobile County and ~31% of sites in Baldwin County, along with a 9.3% decline in burrow abundance in Mobile County and a 20.8% decline in burrow abundance in Baldwin County. Despite an overall decrease in the total number of burrows since 1991–92, there has been a significant increase in the proportion of active status burrows in both counties (Mobile County, 21% increase, and Baldwin County, 25% increase), most likely the result of remnant populations concentrating into suitable habitat. Our GIS model revealed there is a large amount of suitable habitat (232,657 ha) in southwest Alabama to support growing gopher tortoise populations. However, the overall decline in active site persistence and burrow density is likely indicative of the pressure on tortoise populations from increasing human populations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| 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) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".