Patterns of abundance and maturity among three species of parasitic nematodes (<i>Pseudoterranova decipiens</i>, <i>Contracaecum osculatum</i>, <i>Anisakis simplex</i>) co-existing in Sable Island grey seals (<i>Halichoerus grypus</i>)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The abundance and maturity of three species of anisakine nematode (Pseudoterranova decipiens, Contracaecum osculatum, Anisakis simplex) that co-occurred in the stomachs of Sable Island grey seals were examined in relation to seal growth and seasonal considerations. Sealworm (P. decipiens), the predominant nematode in these seals, typically reached numbers of 400 to 2000 worms per stomach. C. osculatum and A. simplex were usually found in much smaller numbers of 40 to 100 and 20 to 60 worms, respectively, per stomach. All three species initially increased in abundance as the seals grew, but after most of a seals’ growth had been attained P. decipiens abundance continued to increase with age, A. simplex numbers either continued to increase or were simply maintained, while C. osculatum abundance declined. Numbers of both P. decipiens and A. simplex declined during winter breeding/pupping and summer moulting fasts or partial fasts, and rose during the regular feeding periods between the fasts. Conversely, numbers of C. osculatum rose during the breeding period, and also during the moulting period in younger seals. We believe this could be attributed to some degree of feeding on prey species in the immediate vicinity of Sable Island that were not preferred during focused feeding periods, and that the inclination to feed during fasting periods decreased as seals grew. An inverse relationship between worm abundance and worm maturity, attributable to the seasonal changes in rates of ingestion of immature worms, was more pronounced for C. osculatum than P. decipiens. C. osculatum was usually represented by much higher proportions of mature worms than P. decipiens. This could be entirely related to the longer periods of time dedicated to feeding than spent breeding or moulting, but higher mortality rates of immature C. osculatum or greater longevity of mature C. osculatum could also have occurred. A. simplex, generally associated with cetacean species as final hosts, rarely matured in grey seals. We have doubts that the grey seal could be considered a final host for A. simplex.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.000 |
| 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".