Evaluation of a Method for Estimating the Laying Rate of Brown-headed Cowbirds
Bibliographic record
Abstract
AnSTI•CT.--The proportion of female Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater) with an egg in the oviduct in a sample collected on a particular day can be used to estimate the daily laying rate of the population.To evaluate several potential biases in the use of this method of estimation, we collected about 400 female cowbirds in southern Ontario in the breeding seasons of 1976 and 1977.There was no evidence that birds with an egg in the oviduct were more wary than those without.The proportion of birds with an egg in the oviduct was independent of six variables: habitat (breeding or feeding), year, time of day, method of detection in breeding and feeding habitats (by sight or sound), sociality (alone, with a male only, with more than one male, and miscellaneous associations), and method of collecting (searching for birds, waiting for them at feedlots, or trapping).We conclude that the proportion of collected females with an oviducal egg can be a good estimate of the average daily laying rate.This was about 0.8 eggs per female in late May and early June.
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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 | 0.005 | 0.020 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 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".