Effects of the veterinary anthelmintic moxidectin on dung beetle survival and ecosystem functioning
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Macrocyclic lactones (MLs) are a class of chemical compounds administered to livestock for parasite control. These compounds are poorly metabolized and are predominately excreted in dung. When coprophagous insects such as dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeoidea) are exposed to ML residues, lethal and sublethal effects are often observed. Indirectly this can lead to ML residues impairing ecosystem functions that underpin production. A strategy to reduce these negative effects involves selecting compounds that offer lower risk to non-target invertebrates such as the ML moxidectin. Considering two dung beetle species with differing sensitivities to agricultural intensification, we asked whether exposure to moxidectin residues influenced survival, reproductive output, and functioning (short- and long-term estimates of dung removal). When exposed to moxidectin, adults of the sensitive species ( Geotrupes spiniger Marsham) experienced a 43% reduction in survival. In contrast, survival of the non-sensitive species ( Aphodius rufipes L.) was unaffected. We were unable to determine whether exposure affected reproductive output of either species. We found little evidence to suggest moxidectin impaired dung removal. We found however, that high densities of a species with relatively low functional importance ( A. rufipes ) can compensate for the loss of a functionally dominant species ( G. spiniger ). Over a longer timeframe, earthworms fully decomposed dung irrespective of moxidectin residues.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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".