A PCR-based method to detect species of <i>Gondwanamyces</i> and <i>Ophiostoma</i> on surfaces of insects colonizing <i>Protea</i> flowers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Flower heads of economically important members of the genus Protea L. mature into conspicuous, often long-lived infructescences, which in South Africa are commonly colonized by species of the ophiostomatoid fungi Gondwanamyces G.J. Marais & M.J. Wingfield and Ophiostoma Syd. & P. Syd. It is suspected that these fungi are transported between infructescences by insects. To develop techniques that would enable detection of ophiostomatoid fungi on insects, primers GPR1 and OSP1 were designed based on unique 28S ribosomal DNA sequences of Gondwanamyces and Ophiostoma from Protea. Multiplex polymerase chain reaction of these primers, combined with universal primer LR6, yielded fragment lengths of 885 and 637 bp. Positive amplification was achieved from as little as 30 and 45 pg of fungal genomic DNA for Gondwanamyces and Ophiostoma, respectively, and fragments of identical lengths were amplified from insects artificially inoculated with these fungi. No other tested fungal species showed amplification with GPR1 or OSP1 and LR6. Using these primers two insect species ( Genuchus hottentottus Fabricius and Oxycarenus maculates Stal.) collected from Protea repens L. infructescences were confirmed as carriers of Gondwanamyces proteae (M.J. Wingfield et al.) G.J. Marais & M.J. Wingfield and Ophiostoma splendens G.J. Marais & M.J. Wingfield, respectively. The method developed in this study represents a rapid detection system that can be used to understand the relationship between insects and ophiostomatoid fungi found associated with flowers of South African species of Protea .
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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) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
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".