A viral aphrodisiac in the cricket <i>Gryllus texensis</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We identified the insect iridovirus IIV-6/CrIV as a pathogen of the cricket Gryllus texensis using electron microscopy (EM) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis. EM showed that the virus attacks the fat body, an organ important for protein production, immune function and lipid storage. During infection the fat body hypertrophied, but egg production withered, leaving the lateral oviducts empty of eggs; the females were effectively sterile. EM of the testis of infected males suggests that the testis was not invaded by the virus, although sperm taken from the spermatophores of infected males showed little or no motility. Nevertheless, males and females continued to mate when infected. In fact, infected males were quicker to court females than uninfected controls. The virus benefits from the continued sexual behaviour of its host; transmission studies show that the virus can be spread through sexual contact. Sickness behaviour, the adaptive reduction of feeding and sexual behaviour that is induced by an activated immune system, was absent in infected crickets. Total haemolymph protein was reduced, as was phenoloxidase activity, suggesting a reduction in immune protein production by the fat body. The evidence suggests that during IIV-6/CrIV infection, the immune signal(s) that induces sickness behaviour is absent. Curtailment of a host's sickness behaviour may be necessary for any pathogen that is spread by host sexual behaviour.
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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 | 0.000 |
| 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 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".