Qualitative risk assessment of impact of Toxoplasma gondii on health of beluga whales, Delphinapterus leucas from the Eastern Beaufort Sea, Northwest Territories
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In recent years, the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii has increasingly been recognized in Arctic fauna, including beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) in the Eastern Beaufort Sea (EBS), Northwest Territories. We qualitatively assessed the risks of T. gondii to the health of EBS beluga because of their importance in livelihood of Arctic communities as well as their potential role as sentinels. This risk assessment used a standard framework including hazard identification, hazard characterization, exposure assessment, and risk characterization. We conclude that currently, the EBS beluga are at moderate risk of exposure to T. gondii, and low risk of developing disease associated with toxoplasmosis, based on the small amount of data available (only healthy, hunter-harvested animals have been examined). Although there was a high level of uncertainty due to limited published data and the challenges in determining prevalence and significance of disease in wild marine mammal populations, overall the EBS population was currently considered to be at a low risk for population level impacts of toxoplasmosis. Finally, we identify knowledge gaps that can guide future research, provide better evidence for future risk assessments, and ultimately better detect and mitigate changing risks for health of Arctic beluga, as well as the communities that rely on sustainable, healthy populations for harvest.
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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 | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".