Predation intensifies parasite exposure in a salmonid food chain
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Summary 1. Parasites can influence ecosystem structure, function and dynamics by mediating predator–prey interactions. Recurrent infestations of the salmon louse Lepeophtheirus salmonis associated with salmon aquaculture may mediate interactions between juvenile salmonids. Louse infection increases pink salmon Oncorhynchus gorbuscha susceptibility to predation, resulting in the trophic transmission of lice (with an adult male bias) to coho salmon O. kisutch predators. While experimental evidence is accumulating, the extent to which trophic transmission structures the distribution of lice among juvenile salmon in the wild is unknown. 2. We used a hierarchical modelling approach to examine the abundance and sex ratio of salmon lice on juvenile pink and coho salmon, collected from a region of salmon aquaculture during sea louse infestations, to test the hypothesis that trophic transmission of salmon lice increases infection on coho that feed upon infected pink salmon prey. 3. As predicted, coho had higher adult and pre‐adult louse abundance than their pink salmon prey, and louse abundance was more adult male biased on predators than sympatric prey. We estimate that trophic transmission accounts for 53–67% of pre‐adult and adult louse infection on coho. 4. Synthesis and applications . These results suggest that, by evading predation, salmon lice can accumulate up juvenile salmon food webs. Predators, such as coho, can experience a two‐ to threefold increase in parasite exposure through predation on infected prey than would otherwise occur through passive exposure to infective larvae. Thus, predation may intensify parasite exposure and undermine the protection to ectoparasites conferred by the larger body size of predators. For larger predatory wild juvenile salmon, the risk of louse transmission from farmed salmon may therefore be greater than previously appreciated. These findings argue for an ecosystem perspective in monitoring and managing the marine environment in areas of intensive salmon aquaculture that includes the productivity and ecological interactions of all salmonid species.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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 | 0.000 |
| 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 teacher head, 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".