Temperature-independent, seasonal fluctuations in immune function of the Mojave Desert Tortoise (<i>Gopherus</i><i>agassizii</i>)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
As long-lived reptiles, Mojave Desert Tortoises (Gopherus agassizii (Cooper, 1861)) are expected to make substantial energetic investments in immune defense. This species also has many adaptations to living in an arid environment characterized by seasonal extremes in temperature and resource availability. By housing G. agassizii at a controlled, constant ambient temperature, we quantified predominantly temperature-independent, seasonal fluctuations in innate immune function and circulating leukocytes in a reptile. We found a decrease in bacteriocidal activity of the blood plasma in winter, with reduced function lasting into the spring. Lymphocyte numbers were elevated in fall and winter, whereas eosinophil numbers increased in summer. Thus, properties of the immune system were up- or down-regulated in different directions across the seasons. We found a much higher level of variation of leukocyte profiles among individuals than has previously been reported for other chelonians. Heterophil:lymphocyte ratios (indicative of chronic glucocorticoid levels) were not associated with any measure of immune function, and thus glucocorticoid does not seem to mediate the observed seasonal changes. We propose a new hypothesis to explain seasonal changes in immune function, based on seasonal resource limitation in the Mojave Desert, including the availability of dietary protein, energy, and opportunities for thermal regulation.
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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) | 0.001 | 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".