Mite choice generates sex- and size-biased infection in<i>Drosophila hydei</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Heterogeneities in parasite infection among conspecific hosts often manifest as sex- or size-biased infections, which are typically attributed to differential host susceptibility and exposure. Since parasite fitness is often tied to host quality, host preference by parasites is likely to be under strong selection. We test the hypothesis that host preference is sufficient to generate variability in infection rate among conspecifics. Specifically, we ask whether the mite Macrocheles muscaedomesticae is able to discriminate between Drosophila hydei hosts of different sex and size, while explicitly accounting for the potential confounding effects of these two factors. Our results indicate a preference for female hosts, but this preference appears to be driven by size and not sex per se. When differences in body size were controlled for, the sex-biased infection disappeared, while mites presented with the choice of two female flies of disparate sizes were more likely to select the larger host. Across the distribution of fly body weight in this study, mites preferentially attached to flies of intermediate size. This study provides evidence that mite choice for certain host types can play an important role in parasite transmission, even in the absence of differential susceptibility or exposure among hosts.
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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 | 0.000 | 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".