SEROPREVALENCE OF TOXOPLASMA GONDII IN MESOCARNIVORES OF THE CANADIAN PRAIRIES
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The protozoon Toxoplasma gondii has a worldwide distribution and affects many species of warm-blooded animals. In the Canadian prairies, mesocarnivores such as striped skunks (Mephitis mephitis) and raccoons (Procyon lotor) have experienced an increase in density and distribution, and they are in close contact with human dwellings. However, there has been no systematic study on the seroprevalence of T. gondii in these mesocarnivore populations. The objectives of the current project were to determine the serum antibody prevalence of T. gondii in Canadian prairie mesocarnivores and to study the relationship between antibody prevalence and species, sex, age, location, and year of collection. Antibodies to T. gondii were found in 5 of 24 (20.8%) skunks from Saskatchewan trapped in 1999 and 5 of 40 (12.5%) in 2000. Seroprevalences for T. gondii in raccoons and skunks trapped in Manitoba were 2 of 10 (20%) raccoons trapped in 2002, 7 of 44 (15.9%) trapped in 2003, and 16 of 37 (43.2%) trapped in 2004; and in 13 of 99 (13.1%) skunks trapped in 2003, 29 of 131 (22.1%) trapped in 2004, 53 of 165 (32.1%) trapped in 2005, and 30 of 51 (58.8%) trapped in 2006. Age, location, and year, but not the host species, were important variables in the determining the seroprevalence of T. gondii in skunks and raccoons. Results confirm that T. gondii is endemic in the skunk and raccoon populations in the Canadian prairies.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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".