New Records of <i>Ixodes affinis</i> (Acari: Ixodidae) Parasitizing Avian Hosts in Southeastern Virginia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Ixodes affinis Neumann (Acari: Ixodidae) is a hard-bodied tick species distributed throughout much of the southeastern United States. Although I. affinis does not parasitize humans, it is a competent vector of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto, the causative-agent of Lyme disease, and thus contributes to the enzootic maintenance of this pathogen. This study presents evidence of I. affinis parasitizing five new host passerine species. During 2012-2014, 1,888 birds were captured and examined for ticks, and 18 immature I. affinis were collected from 12 birds-six Carolina Wrens (Thyrothorus ludovicianus); two Brown Thrashers (Toxostoma rufum); and one American Robin (Turdus migratorius), Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus), Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis), and White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis). Of 15 larvae and 3 nymphs collected, one nymph tested positive for B. burgdorferi DNA. I. affinis was found co-feeding on birds with immature Amblyomma americanum (L.), Ixodes brunneus Koch, Ixodes dentatus Marx, Ixodes scapularis Say, and Haemaphysalis leporispalustris Packard. The results of this research provide a better understanding of I. affinis hosts and identify avian taxa that may play a role in the maintenance and dispersal of this tick 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 | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| 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 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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 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".