The life-cycle, diet, and seasonal movement patterns of land birds on the island of Grenada, and the contribution of diverse small-scale farming to maintaining bird diversity and abundance on small tropical islands
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Knowledge of species habitat requirements, movements, and life cycles is important for understanding their ecology and functions in ecosystems, and is critical for enabling their effective conservation and monitoring, particularly in small-island states where conservation resources are limited. Island biogeography and ecological release theories make broadly supported predictions about the evolution of generalist traits among small-island birds in the Caribbean, and this research examines the influence of small-island conditions on the life cycle adaptations, diets, and distribution of birds and their responses to human land-use such as agriculture to inform conservation research and management. Using mist-netting, I found that 10 common terrestrial bird species on Grenada (3 endemic to the East Caribbean) exhibited similar patterns of low breeding period seasonality, followed by synchronized peaks in moult intensity and uncommonly high rates of moult-breeding overlap during peak rainfall and high arthropod abundance, despite the wide range in size, morphology, and phylogeny of these species. I studied patterns of seasonal diet composition and diet-overlap among species using DNA meta-barcoding of feces, which suggested that moult-breeding overlap may result from restricted time periods over which arthropod availability is sufficient for breeding and moult to occur. Diet analyses also indicated that agricultural habitats provide important year-round food sources. Lastly, repeated point-count surveys indicated increased bird diversity and abundance at high elevations and in closed-canopy habitats during the dry season, while many birds moved to low elevations and open-canopy habitats in the wet season. Much of Grenada consists of a diverse mosaic of closed-canopy secondary forest patches, interspersed among more open agroforests and small-scale cropping and grazed areas. These agroecosystems appear to provide important habitats and foods to birds throughout the year, especially more-open canopy agroforests in the wet season, while intact canopy forests provide important dry season habitat, which may be particularly important for species in lowland coastal fringe areas experiencing more intensive agricultural, urban, and resort development. This research demonstrates life history adaptations of birds on small islands, the importance of maintaining habitat diversity at local and landscape scales for species conservation, and the contribution of diverse small-scale agroecosystems to supporting small-island bird communities.
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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 | 0.001 |
| 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".