The Effect of Sinus Nematode Infection on Braincase Volume and Cranium Shape in the Mink
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Mustelids, including American mink (Neovison vison), are definitive hosts for sinus nematodes of the genus Skrjabingylus. Previous research has suggested that skrjabingylosis can cause a swelling of the frontal sinuses in mustelid hosts, leading to an inverse relationship between intensity of infection and braincase volume. We tested this hypothesis on 261 adult mink skulls collected in Ontario, Canada. Consistent with the hypothesis, we found a reduced slope in the relationship between skull size and braincase volume for male mink exhibiting lesions attributable to infection with Skrjabingylus, compared to male mink with no lesions. However, we found no differences in slope for female mink. Male mink with lesions also had shorter postorbital lengths and mastoid breadths compared to males without lesions. Our results demonstrated that sinus nematodes may cause reduced braincase volume, but only in male mink. Infection may also have broader effects on skull shape than localized damage to the frontal bones and braincase roof. We suggest that parasitism of mink by Skrjabingylus may be sex-biased because of the sexual size dimorphism of the species.
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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 | 0.003 | 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) | 0.000 | 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".