The Effects of Urbanization on Prairie Bats
Bibliographic record
Abstract
(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) My thesis addresses three key gaps in urban-ecology research, which lacks sufficient attention to (1) grassland biomes, (2) individual- and population-level effects, and (3) nonavian vertebrates. I hypothesized that in the fairly flat, homogeneous Prairies, the city (Calgary, Alberta) is like a structurally complex island, with increased availability of roosts and prey. Along with the urban heat island, these features of the urban environment would benefit Prairie bats, producing increased bat abundance, diversity and fitness in the city relative to outside. I acoustically monitored bat activity and captured bats in mist nets, and found that although urban bats were more abundant, they were not more diverse. Myotis lucifugus dominated bat assemblages throughout my study area, but nowhere more so than in Calgary. It appears that urbanization in the Prairies may create attractive habitat for one synanthropic species (M. lucifugus) but have the opposite effect for others. I sampled nocturnal insects to assess the potential availability of prey to bats, and acoustically monitored their foraging activity. Contrary to my predictions, neither insect abundance nor insect diversity was maximized in the city, and urban bats did not forage more than non-urban bats did. Thus, increased numbers of M. lucifugus in Calgary do not seem linked to an urban increase in prey availability. I assessed body condition, reproductive rates, spermatogenesis, production of juveniles, post-natal growth and population age structure in M. lucifugus. I found no support for predictions that urban bats have enhanced fitness relative to non-urban conspecifics. Instead, it appears that increased population density in the city may be detrimental to bats, perhaps by increasing intraspecific competition for food. Finally, I assessed the ectoparasite loads of urban and non-urban bats. The effects of urbanization in terms of modulating ectoparasitism were dependent on the bat species, bat group and parasite type, with no consistent pattern. Ultimately, I reject my overall hypothesis. Rather than benefitting Prairie bats, urbanization may be detrimental to them. This may reflect a more general negative effect of increased bat density and/or larger group size in the city.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.001 |
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".