Fur loss syndrome and lice infestations observed on Arctic foxes in central Nunavut, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
As temperatures in the circumpolar north continue to warm, shifts in species distribution and the breakdown of environmental barriers for arthropods may impact the diversity and distribution of ectoparasites in Arctic ecosystems. In May 2019, fur loss over the neck and shoulders was observed on Arctic foxes in a terrestrial Arctic ecosystem (Karrak Lake) in central Nunavut, Canada. This was inconsistent with normal patterns of shedding winter fur and had not been observed on Arctic foxes in this population over the previous 19 years of live-trapping. Operculated eggs attached to hair shafts were collected from one affected fox. Conventional PCR using universal louse primers targeting conserved regions of mitochondrial 12S and 16S rDNA confirmed that the eggs belonged to the order Phthiraptera. Sequencing results were inconclusive at the species level. Further investigation revealed a single unpublished report of an Arctic fox with similar fur loss trapped on mainland Nunavut, in 1997. Adult lice collected from this fox were identified as sucking lice (potentially from the genus Linognathus). Our findings emphasize the need for further monitoring and have significant implications for trappers and wildlife management, as infestations negatively impact the pelt quality of these important furbearers.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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 | 0.001 |
| 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".