Mating behaviour and the effects of parasites on reproductive success in male Columbian ground squirrels (Spermophilus columbianus)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
I examined the influence of mating order and male mating behaviour using Columbian ground squirrels (Spermophilus columbianus) as study species. The data were collected in the Sheep River Provincial Park, Canada including field seasons 2005 - 2008. Field work provided trapping and observational data of free-living ground squirrels. The observational data were combined with paternity analyses to assess detailed information concerning male reproductive success. (1) I tested whether mating order affects mating success in males and whether order effects are influenced by the number of mating partners a female had. (2) I examined the mechanisms involved in shaping mating order effects. Finally (3) I evaluated whether experimental parasite removal influenced mating success in S. columbianus. I found (1) that the majority of all litters were multiply sired, while singly sired litters did occur as well and were mainly produced by the first mating partner. The first position within a mating sequence was the most successful position in terms of reproductive success. Nevertheless, subsequent males up to the fifth position did fertilise offspring. The first male advantage diminished with increasing number of male mating partners, indicating that sperm competition plays an important role. (2) The time a male spent mating with a female and mate guarding durations were positively correlated. Both durations positively correlated with male reproductive success, but only for the first and the second male to mate. Mate guarding by the first male significantly reduced, but not excluded, the number of additional males a female mated with. Finally, male investment in reproductive behaviours increased with male and female age, but was also increased when partners mated age-assortatively. (3) Contrary to our expectations, our findings showed that the parasite removal treatment did not significantly affect male reproductive behaviour and hence did not change male reproductive success. Furthermore, parasite-free males did not gain more body mass than control animals. Taken together, the results support the idea that male-male competition and/or mate choice are of primary importance for shaping reproductive strategies in S. columbianus. The role of parasites for variation in male reproductive success, however, remains elusive.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| 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".