Trematode behaviours and the perceptual worlds of parasites
Bibliographic record
Abstract
There is a great deal of empirical data and theoretical predictions on the patterns and processes of trematode behaviour, particularly in relation to host-finding activities by the free-living stages and site-finding migrations by the parasitic stages within their hosts. Ecological and evolutionary models of trematode life histories often make explicit assumptions about how these organisms must perceive and respond to signals in their worlds as they move from host to host and as they parasitize each host. Nevertheless, it is unclear how natural selection shapes the parasites' behavioural strategies. In addition, at each stage in their life cycle, trematodes are adorned with elaborate sensory organs and possess sophisticated neuromuscular systems, but it is not clear how they use these complex machinery to perceive their worlds. The purpose of this review is to address this question through insights gathered from a century of research on trematode behaviour. Core theoretical assumptions from modern animal behaviour are used to provide the context for this analysis; a key concept is that all animals have unique perceptual worlds that may be inferred from their behaviours. A critical idea is that all animals possess complex patterns of innate behaviour which can be released by extremely specific signals from the environment. The evidence suggests that trematode parasites live in ecologically predictable aquatic and internal host environments where they perceive only small subsets of the total information available from the environment. A general conclusion is that host finding in miracidia and cercaria, and site-finding by trematodes migrating within their definitive hosts, is accomplished through the release of innate patterns of behaviours which are adaptive within the context of conditions in the worm's environment. Examples from empirical studies are used to support the contention that, despite the apparent complexity of their free-living and parasitic environments, the perceptual worlds of trematodes are impoverished, and complex patterns of behaviour may be released by only a few signals in their environment.
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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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".