Determination of vertebrate scavenger guilds in southwestern Ontario
Bibliographic record
Abstract
When a body is exposed to the natural environment, there are a multitude of taphonomic agents that can affect the remains. One taphonomic agent that has not been extensively studied in Canada is vertebrate scavengers. Although in recent years vertebrate scavenging studies have occurred in several provinces, Canada is a large country with many environmental and climate types. This study aimed to determine the scavenger guild of a rural region of Leamington, in southwestern Ontario. Pig carcasses were surface deposited at a secure location which was accessible to scavengers with placement of two carcasses each in Fall 2023 and Summer 2024, respectively. Scavenging activity was captured using cellular and non-cellular trail cameras. Images were qualitatively analyzed to establish species interaction with the carcasses. It was found that the number of species was limited, but the presence of certain species was prevalent. At all sites, opossums and coyotes were the most frequent scavengers, with coyotes being responsible for the movement and dispersal of the carcasses. The study findings can provide valuable information when searching for human remains in this area or in other areas with similar terrain, climate and species.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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 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".