Development and application of a health function score system for grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) in western Alberta
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The persistence of grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) in western Alberta is threatened by increasing human activities on the landscape.The Foothills Research Institute Grizzly Bear Program (FRIGBP) hypothesizes human-caused landscape change in Alberta causes longterm stress in individual bears, resulting in impaired biological functions and, when many bears are affected, decreased population performance.To facilitate the evaluation of individual grizzly bear health within the FRIGBP, the objective of my research was to develop and assess the usefulness of a health function score system for grizzly bears.From a large set of complex biological data collected from grizzly bears from 1999 to 2007, I merged 14 " constituent" variables into four health functions; growth, immunity, movement, and stress.For each health function, I calculated individual scores by adding ranked and weighted variable percentiles.I found that health function scores corresponded well with health status of individual bears based on values for multiple constituent variables.The score system facilitated quick screening of health in individual bears, identification of bears with reduced health, and comparison of health profiles between bears.I examined the usefulness of the score system by evaluating relationships presumed to exist under the working hypothesis of the FRIGBP.Results generated from health function scores were compared with those fromconstituent variable values using statistical and graphical techniques.I concluded that scores likely provided clearer depiction of wildlife health relationships than did constituent variables because they were not influenced by capture method, sex, or outlying observations.By using the score system, I found support for the proposed positive relationship between humanaffected landscape condition and stress, but not for inverse relationships between stress and other health functions.The usefulness of the score system could be increased by minimizing use of redundant constituent variables, e.g., in growth and immunity, and removing the influence of potential confounding factors, e.g., capture.
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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 | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".