Parasites in the inner ear of harbour porpoise: cases from the North and Baltic Seas
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Peribullar sinuses of harbour porpoises Phocoena phocoena are parasitized with high prevalence by the nematode Stenurus minor. The effect of S. minor on the hearing ability of this species is still undetermined. Here, we review the occurrence of S. minor in the inner ear of harbour porpoises recovered from strandings in the North and Baltic Seas. In particular, we present the results from ears collected in German and Danish waters from 2002 to 2016 and from Dutch waters from 2010 to 2016. While the prevalence of S. minor in pterygoid and peribullar sinuses and tympanic cavity was high in harbour porpoises (66.67% in our cases), its prevalence in the cochlea was rare. Only 1 case out of 129 analysed by either histology, electron microscopy or immunofluorescence showed the presence of a nematode parasite morphologically consistent with S. minor at the most basal portion of the right cochlea. This individual also had severe haemorrhage along the right cochlear spiral, which was likely caused by ectopic S. minor migration. Although this animal might have had impaired hearing in the right ear, it was otherwise in good body condition with evidence of recent feeding. These findings highlight the need to study the effect of parasites on hearing, and other pathological changes that might impair appropriate processing of acoustic information.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 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 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".