Seasonal Patterns and Relationships among Coccidian Infestations, Measures of Oxidative Physiology, and Immune Function in Free-Living House Sparrows over an Annual Cycle
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Temporal variation in oxidative physiology and its associated immune function may occur as a result of changes in parasite infection over the year. Evidence from field and laboratory studies suggests links between infection risk, oxidative stress, and the ability of animals to mount an immune response; however, the importance of parasites in mediating seasonal change in physiological makeup is still debated. Also, little is known about the temporal consistency of relationships among parasite infestation, markers of oxidative status and immune function in wild animals, and whether variation in oxidative measures can be viewed as a single integrated system. To address these questions, we sampled free-living house sparrows (Passer domesticus) every 2 mo over a complete year and measured infestation with coccidian parasites as well as nine traits that reflect condition, oxidative physiology, and immune function. We found significant seasonal variation in coccidian infestation and in seven out of nine condition and physiological variables over the year. However, we found little support for parasite-mediated change in condition, oxidative physiology, and immune functions in house sparrows. In accordance with this, we found no temporal consistency in relationships between the intensity of infestation and physiology. Among measures of oxidative physiology, antioxidants (measured as the total antioxidant capacity and the concentration of uric acid in the plasma) and oxidative damage (measured through the level of malondialdehyde in plasma) positively and consistently covaried over the year, while no such associations were found for the rest of traits (body mass, total glutathione, and leukocyte numbers). Our results show that natural levels of chronic coccidian infection have a limited effect on the seasonal change of physiological traits, suggesting that the variation of the latter is probably more affected by short-term disturbances, such as acute infection and/or season-specific stress stimuli.
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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) | 0.000 | 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 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".