Movement and habitat-use of the Great Basin Spadefoot (Spea Intermontana) at its northern range limit
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Great Basin Spadefoot (Spea intermontana) ranges from Arizona to British Columbia (BC) in western North America, being typically associated with arid environments. However, at the northern limit of the species (south-central BC), the ecosystem contains only small patches of grassland interspersed within a forested landscape, and the climate is cool and wet compared to the core of the spadefoot range. Due to the threatened status of spadefoots in BC, breeding ponds have been identified, but effective management requires data on habitat use away from these bodies of water. Using telemetry, I examined movement patterns and determined habitat associations of diurnal retreat sites (shallow self-made or pre-existing burrows) for these animals. I was able to track 19 spadefoots for varying lengths of time over two active seasons in 2009 and 2010. In general, telemetered spadefoots showed periodic, eruptive movements, where single (used one time only) or core (used multiple times) retreat sites were utilized for a period of time, prior to larger movements that took the animal to another area (with another set of retreat sites). Often retreat sites were used repeatedly; individuals would emerge to forage, travel to breeding ponds, and/or utilize other sites, sometimes retracing their movement patterns over large distances. The majority of terrestrial habitat used was within 112 m from breeding ponds and 136 m was the average maximum displacement, although telemetered spadefoots ventured up to 370 m from aquatic habitat. Grassland and forest path habitat-types types were selected by spadefoots at a higher proportion than in random locations. At a smaller scale within these macro-habitats, spadefoots selected for retreat sites containing higher proportions of bare ground and rock compared to random locations. This study provides much-needed background information on the behaviour and terrestrial habitat preferences of Great Basin spadefoots, and can be used to inform management strategies for this species at the northern extent of their geographic range.
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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".