Characterizing the oral and distal gut microbiota of the threatened southern sea otter ( <i>Enhydra lutris nereis</i> ) to enhance conservation practice
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
) is a threatened sub-species in coastal ecosystems. To understand better the role of diet, monitor health, and enhance management of this and other marine mammal species, we characterized the oral (gingival) and distal gut (rectal and fecal) microbiota of 158 wild southern sea otters living off the coast of central California, USA, and 12 captive sea otters, some of which were included in a diet shift experiment. We found that the sea otter fecal microbiota was distinct from that of three other otter species, and that captivity does not significantly alter the community structure of the sea otter gingival or distal gut microbiota. Metagenomic analysis unexpectedly revealed that the majority of sea otter fecal DNA is derived from prey, rather than from indigenous bacteria or host cells as with most other mammals. We speculate that a reduced bacterial biomass in the sea otter gut reflects rapid gut transit time and a particular strategy for foraging and energy harvest. This study establishes a reference for the healthy sea otter microbiota, highlights how a marine lifestyle may shape the mammalian microbiota, and may inform future health assessments and conservation management of sea otter populations.
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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 | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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) | 0.000 | 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