<p><strong>Ticks parasitizing gallinaceous birds in Canada and first record of <em>Borrelia</em> <em>burgdorferi</em>-infected <em>Ixodes pacificus</em> (Acari: Ixodidae) from California Quail</strong></p>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In far-western Canada, gallinaceous birds are hosts of hard ticks (Ixodida: Ixodidae) that can carry zoonotic pathogens. In this study, we collected the avian coastal tick, Ixodes auritulus Neumann, the western blacklegged tick, Ixodes pacificus Cooley & Kohls, and Ixodes spinipalpis Hadwen & Nuttall, from gallinaceous birds on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Notably, we provide the first records of these three tick species on California Quail, Callipepla californica (Shaw), in Canada. We document the first records of I. auritulus parasitizing Sooty Grouse, Dendragapus fulginosis (Ridway). Moreover, we furnish the first report of I. spinipalpis on a quail. An I. pacificus nymph was collected from a California Quail, and it was positive for the Lyme disease bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (s.l.) Johnson, Schmid, Hyde, Steigerwalt & Brenner. Using PCR on the nymphal extract and DNA sequencing on the borrelial amplicon, we specifically detected B. burgdorferi sensu stricto (s.s.), a genospecies pathogenic to humans and certain domestic animals. Since some ground-dwelling birds are involved in the enzootic maintenance of Lyme disease, veterinarians, wildlife rehabilitators, hunters, and health-care providers should be vigilant that gallinaceous birds may play a role in the enzootic transmission of B. burgdorferi s.l. in Canada.
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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 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 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 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".