Native fly parasites are the principal cause of nestling mortality in endangered Tasmanian pardalotes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Established host–parasite interactions at an evolutionary equilibrium are not predicted to result in host population decline. However, parasites may become a major threat to host species weakened by other factors such as habitat degradation or loss of genetic diversity in small populations. We investigate an unusually virulent Tasmanian ectoparasite,Passeromyia longicornis, in its long‐term hosts, the endangered forty‐spotted pardalote (Pardalotus quadragintus) and striated pardalote (Pardalotus striatus) in southeastern Tasmania, Australia. We conducted a parasite elimination experiment to determine the net effect of parasites on forty‐spotted pardalote nestling mortality, and monitored nestling parasite load and mortality in forty‐spotted and striated pardalote nestlings during two breeding seasons (Aug–Jan, 2013–2015).Passeromyia longicornislarvae killed 81% of all forty‐spotted pardalotes nestlings. Across 2 years, forty‐spotted pardalotes fledged fewer nestlings (18%) than sympatric striated pardalotes (26%), and this difference was generated by a combination of higher parasite load and virulence in forty‐spotted pardalote nests. These results show that native ectoparasites can cause substantial and potentially unsustainable mortality in their hosts.
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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 | 0.000 |
| 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 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".