Evaluating Social Network Dynamics of Bigg’s Killer Whales (<i>Orcinus orca</i>) and Vessel Traffic within a Transboundary Region: Implications for Conservation Management
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The social lives of animals are defined by group dynamics based on the nature and strength of associations and movements between individuals, often resulting in highly complex and interconnected social networks. However, understanding of how environmental variables may shape this structure is poorly understood. Within the inland waters of Washington State and southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, mammal-eating Bigg’s (transient) killer whales occur in relatively small, but stable social groups. Group size and occurrence in recent years has increased, coinciding with a growing whale watching industry. Given the central importance of the social network within killer whale population dynamics, such as the maintenance of cooperation and cultural transmission of information, shifts in social network structure caused by environmental processes may have significant ecological and evolutionary consequences. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the increased presence of Bigg’s killer whales within the Salish Sea leaves them susceptible to the various and growing anthropogenic pressures within this area. Utilizing a long-term data set (1987-2015), the objectives of this doctoral study are to: (1) identify the level(s) of preferred associations and social differentiation within Bigg’s societies relative to foraging specializations; (2) re-evaluate and compare historical measures and persistence of Bigg’s sociality, including demographic influences and dispersion patterns; and, (3) assess the extent to which individual sociality can predict received vessel traffic levels, as well as other variables driving targeted whale watching. The results of this work will better clarify the social dynamics and population structure of Bigg’s killer whales and will thus inform on proper management of this conservation unit. Likewise, the combined evaluation of social dynamics and anthropogenic pressures (vessel traffic) experienced by this population can provide key information that may enable managers to implement proper measures to mitigate anthropogenic impacts. Finally, the results of this analysis will serve as a platform for further evaluating the predator-prey dynamics of Bigg’s killer whale stocks that are central to the Salish Sea ecosystem.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| 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 | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".