No pre-zygotic isolation mechanisms between Schistosoma haematobium and Schistosoma bovis parasites: From mating interactions to differential gene expression
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Species usually develop reproductive isolation mechanisms allowing them to avoid interbreeding. These preventive barriers can act before reproduction, "pre-zygotic barriers", or after reproduction, "post-zygotic barriers". Pre-zygotic barriers prevent unfavourable mating, while post-zygotic barriers determine the viability and selective success of the hybrid offspring. Hybridization in parasites and the underlying reproductive isolation mechanisms maintaining their genetic integrity have been overlooked. Using an integrated approach this work aims to quantify the relative importance of pre-zygotic barriers in Schistosoma haematobium x S. bovis crosses. These two co-endemic species cause schistosomiasis, one of the major debilitating parasitic diseases worldwide, and can hybridize naturally. Using mate choice experiments we first tested if a specific mate recognition system exists between both species. Second, using RNA-sequencing we analysed differential gene expression between homo- and hetero-specific pairing in male and female adult parasites. We show that homo- and hetero-specific pairing occurs randomly between these two species, and few genes in both sexes are affected by hetero-specific pairing. This suggests that i) mate choice is not a reproductive isolating factor, and that ii) no pre-zygotic barrier except spatial isolation "by the final vertebrate host" seems to limit interbreeding between these two species. Interestingly, among the few genes affected by the pairing status of the worms, some can be related to pathways affected during male and female interactions and may also present interesting candidates for species isolation mechanisms and hybridization in schistosome parasites.
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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 | 0.001 | 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) | 0.003 | 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 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".