Ixodes scapularis tick distribution and infection rates in Ottawa, Ontario, 2017
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: The incidence of Lyme disease has increased in many regions of Canada in recent years, including in Ottawa, Ontario.To date there has been limited active tick surveillance in the region.Objectives: To estimate both the distribution and density of Ixodes scapularis ticks in the city of Ottawa, and the infection rates of ticks with Borrelia burgdorferi (that causes Lyme disease) and other tick-borne pathogens.Methods: Between June and October 2017, tick surveillance was conducted by drag sampling at 23 sites in Ottawa municipal parks, recreational trails and forests.Blacklegged ticks were tested for B. burgdorferi, Borrelia miyamotoi and Anaplasma phagocytophilum using quantitative polymerase chain reaction protocols.Results: I. scapularis ticks were found in 16 of the 23 sites (70%).Recreational trails, conservation areas/forests and the provincial park within the city of Ottawa had significantly higher tick densities than municipal parks (p<0.01).Of the 194 adult and 26 nymphal I. scapularis tested, prevalence of infection was 29.5% for B. burgdorferi, 0.45% for B. miyamotoi and 0.91% for A. phagocytophilum.Conclusion: Almost 30% of I. scapularis ticks tested in suburban and rural areas of the city of Ottawa were infected with B. burgdorferi, known to cause Lyme disease.Other types of infection, known to cause anaplasmosis and tick-borne relapsing fever, were also detected, although were very rare.Conducting active tick surveillance at the local level may help to inform risk assessment and public health actions.
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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 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
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".