Effects of population density and body size on disease ecology of the European lobster in a temperate marine conservation zone
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Marine conservation zones (MCZs) are a form of spatial marine management, increasingly popular since the move towards ecosystem-based fisheries management. Implementation, however, is somewhat contentious and as a result of their short history, their effects are still widely unknown and understudied. Here, we investigate the population and health of the European lobster (Homarus gammarus) in the Lundy Island Marine Conservation Zone, Bristol Channel, UK. Using the fished refuge zone (RZ) as a control area, catch per unit effort was calculated for both the no-take zone (NTZ) and RZ and binomial logistic regression models were used to examine the effects of site, sex, landing size, and loss of chelae on the probability of shell disease and injury presence in individuals. Lobsters were also tested for the causative agent of gaffkaemia, Aerococcus viridans var. homari, and white spot syndrome virus (WSSV). The analysis revealed a higher lobster density and larger lobsters in the NTZ compared with the RZ. Shell disease was present in 24% of lobsters and the probability of shell disease occurrence increased notably for individuals over the minimum landing size (MLS) of 90 mm carapace length. Shell disease was also more prevalent in lobsters displaying injury, and in males. Injury was present in 33% of lobsters sampled and prevalence was higher in lobsters in the NTZ compared with the RZ, and in lobsters >MLS. Aerococcus viridans var. homari was detected in <1% of individuals, but WSSV was absent from all sampled lobsters. Overall, the study demonstrates both positive and potentially negative effects of NTZs, methods for effective non-lethal sampling of disease agents, and highlights the need for more comprehensive, long-term monitoring within highly protected MCZs, both before and after implementation.
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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) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 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".