Chemical and biological pollution contribute to the immunological profiles of free-ranging harbor seals
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Polychlorinated biphenyls and other persistent organic pollutants have been associated with immunotoxicity and outbreaks of (infectious) disease in marine mammals by rendering them vulnerable to infection by pathogens such as viruses and bacteria. In an immunotoxicological study of free-ranging harbor seals (Phoca vitulina), we obtained samples of blood and blubber from seal pups that were live-captured from two remote and two near-urban sites in British Columbia, Canada, and Washington state, USA. Using these samples, we quantified hematology, innate immune function, adaptive immune function, and polychlorinated biphenyl accumulation. While controlling for confounding factors (age, sex, and condition), univariate correlations between phagocytosis (r2 = 0.30, p = 0.002), respiratory burst (r2 =0.45, p= 0.000), T-lymphocyte function (r2 = 0.16, p = 0.028), lymphocyte signaling (r2 = 0.17, p = 0.025), and lymphocyte counts (r2 = 0.29, p = 0.002), and polychlorinated biphenyl concentrations suggested chemical-associated immunotoxicity. Principal component analysis of immunological endpoints provided additional evidence of immunotoxic effects in seals. However, principal component analysis also identified a noncontaminant-related factor by distinguishing between seals inhabiting urban versus remote sites, with results being consistent with increased pathogen exposure. Elevated fecal coliform concentrations in water, and observations of terrestrial spill-over pathogens in local seals, further support the notion of biological pollution at these sites. Although our study highlights the role that environmental contaminants might play in rendering marine mammal populations vulnerable to disease through immunotoxicity, it also suggests that biological pollution represents an emerging conservation concern.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".