Surviving the concrete jungle: the eco-physiological consequences of consuming anthropogenic food waste on raccoons (Procyon lotor)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Urbanization is a process where natural landscapes are transformed to include structures like buildings and roads to accommodate the growing human population. Many species of wildlife are unable to adapt to these rapid and drastic landscape changes, resulting in declines to certain populations. However, species like mesocarnivores that have flexible diets are able to thrive in these urbanized environments due to the increased access to anthropogenic food waste. Food resources such as this are different in both quantity and quality, potentially leading to individual health effects. This research studied the physiological consequences associated with an urban diet in raccoons (Procyon lotor), a species that is opportunistic and omnivorous. Dietary patterns using C and N stable isotope analysis were measured, along with their effect on body condition, glycated serum protein (GSP), and leptin across an urbanization gradient from the Ontario and Québec regions during the fall. Stable isotope analysis revealed δ13C and δ15N were highest in agricultural and barren landscapes, exhibiting a diet highly reliant on C4 plants such as corn and animal protein, respectively, instead of anthropogenic food waste as previous studies with summer sampling periods have shown. Body condition had a positive relationship with both δ13C and leptin, providing evidence that increases in body condition is associated with fat mass. However, extremely high body condition with greater fat reserves may have negative health consequences such as hyperglycemia, as seen with increased GSP concentrations from raccoons in agricultural and barren landscapes. Broad scale analyses of body condition (Ontario and Québec) showed sex- specific results, where males were in better body condition in urban areas and females were in poorer body condition. Finer scale analyses of Ontario showed that raccoons from agricultural and barren landscapes were in poorer body condition than those from natural landscapes, which may provide insight into how raccoons conserve energy for locomotion. Males were found to be in consistently better body condition than females in Ontario. Surprisingly, there was no effect of urbanization in Québec potentially due to differences in municipal waste management policies. Overall, this study suggests a shift in diet from anthropogenic food waste to resources from agricultural and barren landscapes throughout the fall, as it is more readily available food source.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 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".