Molecular detection of small hive beetle Aethina tumida Murray (Coleoptera: Nitidulidae): DNA barcoding and development of a real-time PCR assay
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Small hive beetle (SHB), Aethina tumida can feed on honey, pollen and brood in honey bee colonies. It was endemic to Africa, but since 1996 has been detected in a number of countries worldwide, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Mexico, South Korea, Philippines and the USA where it has had economic effects on local apiculture. To improve SHB identification, we obtained the first reference sequences from the DNA barcoding 5' COI gene region for SHB and some species of the family Nitidulidae associated with beehives. Phylogenetic analysis of SHB COI sequences (3' COI) revealed two divergent lineages, with those from Australia and USA being genetically different from the recent detection in Italy. Many countries, including New Zealand, are currently free from SHB, and require a rapid detection method for biosecurity. Here we present the development and validation of a real-time PCR assay for detection of SHB. The assay showed high specificity and sensitivity for detecting SHB, with no cross-reaction observed with closely related species, such as A. concolor. The real-time PCR is sensitive, detecting the target sequences up to 100 copies/µL. This assay should prove a useful biosecurity tool for rapid detection of SHB worldwide.
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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 | 0.002 | 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".