The taphonomic impact of scavenger guilds in peri-urban and rural regions of central and southern Alberta. Part II - Dispersal patterns of forensically relevant vertebrate scavengers
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Recovering forensic evidence in dispersed scenarios is challenging because of the taphonomic influence of scavengers. This study aimed to observe how remains were dispersed by the scavenger guilds identified in Part 1 (Forbes et al., 2024) of a Canadian study, which include bears, canids, and magpies, and other possible environmental factors. Clothed pig carcasses ( Sus scrofa ) were placed in open- and closed-canopy habitats of peri-urban and rural regions of two major cities in Alberta (Calgary and Edmonton). Four carcasses were deposited in each city in August 2021 and again in 2022, and a search to document and recover the remains was conducted 10–12 months after deposition. The mean recovery rates of skeletal elements were 22.5 % (2.0 %–66.9 %). Calgary rural open and closed environments had the largest maximum dispersal distances (60–70 m) which may be associated with the presence of grizzly bears and canid scavengers (coyotes and semi-wild dogs). There was no statistical difference in dispersal distances between open and closed habitats. Limbs were the most common skeletal element dispersed furthest. The results offer new and relevant information to organizations tasked with searching for human remains, especially remains that may have been scavenged and scattered from the original deposition site in an Albertan landscape.
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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 | 0.001 | 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 | 0.000 | 0.004 |
| 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 it