Authors' contributions statement to highlight contribution of an undergraduate student Statements of authors' contributions appear to be a standard practice in journal papers from experimental sciences or similar fields. Yet I haven't seen many such examples in mathematics.

I'm wondering if it will be appropriate to have a statement of contributions in a paper (algebraic geometry + some applications) that states the contribution of a coauthor who is my undergraduate student. If yes, will it be strange if the statement only explain the contribution of this student coauthor but not other coauthors?

The intended purpose for such a statement is twofold:


To highlight the real (and nontrivial) contribution of an undergraduate student which may potentially be helpful for this student's career.
To avoid opposition from coauthors who may question listing a student as an author. (EDIT: To avoid opposition from coauthors who may question the actual amount of contribution)


EDIT: One crucial detail was left as it was somewhat subjective. The student's contribution is small but nontrivial in my opinion. It is only a nice-to-have result. This paper can live without it. But I believe it adds some depth to this paper. So the necessity of this student's contribution is debatable. I'd hope to preemptively eliminate this debate --- why argue with someone you'll work with for a long time.
In mathematics, the default assumption is that all authors contributed more or less equally to a project, so the main reason I see to describe individual author's contributions in a mathematics paper is that the authors want to attribute credit of certain aspects of the paper to individual authors.  (This can also be done with appendices by subsets of coauthors.)

It does not make particular sense to me to highlight someone's contributions just because they are a student. You are free to do so if you wish, but it will be weird if you only describe one of the authors' contributions.


  
  To avoid opposition from coauthors who may question listing a student as an author. 
  


This is completely ridiculous.  I have never heard of any co-author complaining that someone should not be listed as a co-author just because they are a student.