101 Assessment of semen traits in servals (Leptailurus serval) and Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis)
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Servals and Canada lynx are managed by species survival plans in North American zoos, but current populations are not sustainable. Increased knowledge of their reproductive biology would benefit breeding management and development of assisted reproductive techniques. The aims of our study were to (1) evaluate effectiveness of urethral catheterization and electroejaculation (EEJ) for semen collection; (2) characterise basal seminal traits; and (3) compare effectiveness of semen cryopreservation methods. Semen was collected from 6 servals and 9 Canada lynx via a urinary catheter (3.5 Fr × 22 cm, inserted 15 cm into the urethra), followed by EEJ under dexmedetomidine-ketamine anaesthesia. To assess the effect of seasonality on lynx seminal traits, semen was collected before (late January), during (mid-February to mid-March), and after (early April) the peak breeding season. Serval and lynx semen were frozen by conventional slow freezing (i.e. in 0.25-mL straws cooled to 4°C for 2 h and frozen in LN vapor) in a soy lecithin-based (SOY) or egg yolk-based (TEY) extender with 4% glycerol and by ultra-rapid freezing (URF; direct pelleting into LN at ˜104 °C/min) in SOY medium with 0.2 M sucrose. To evaluate post-thaw sperm function in servals, heterologous IVF of domestic cat oocytes was performed, with cleavage rate assessed at 48 h post-insemination. Data were analysed by one-way or repeated-measures ANOVA. Data are mean ± standard deviation. Sperm recovery by urethral catheterization was negligible in both species, but EEJ allowed sperm collection in all males. Lynx seminal traits were similar during breeding and nonbreeding seasons. Testicular volume (4.81 ± 1.17 cm3) and sperm quality (13 ± 11 × 106 sperm/ejaculate; 49 ± 14% motility; 29 ± 12% normal morphology; 74 ± 13% acrosome integrity) were consistent with previous findings in the lynx genus. Post-thaw sperm quality in lynx has not yet been evaluated. In servals, testes volume was 6.56 ± 2.11 cm3 with good sperm quality for most males (46 ± 36 × 106 sperm/ejaculate; 75 ± 20% motility; 56 ± 36% normal morphology; 84 ± 7% acrosome integrity). Post-thaw, serval sperm acrosome integrity (31 ± 15, 21 ± 13, 24 ± 13% at 0 h for TEY, SOY, and URF, respectively; P > 0.05) and motility (40 ± 21% at 0 h, 20 ± 11% at 6 h for TEY; 24 ± 19% at 0 h, 6 ± 4% at 6 h for SOY; 21 ± 16% at 0 h, 3 ± 2% at 6 h for URF; treatment: P > 0.05; time: P < 0.05; interaction: P > 0.05) declined substantially. However, thawed sperm could fertilize domestic cat oocytes with no difference among treatments in cleavage success (53 ± 6, 47 ± 4, or 49 ± 14%; TEY, SOY, and URF, respectively; P > 0.05), indicating that standard freezing methods are effective in servals. Our findings provide zoos with valuable information about normative reproductive traits in both species. Supported by IMLS and the Roger & Kathy Gross Post-doctoral Fellowship.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.000 |
| 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 it