Immunocompetence in workers of a social insect, <i>Bombus terrestris</i> L., in relation to foraging activity and parasitic infection
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The immune system is a general mechanism that reduces the fitness cost of parasitism. In this study, we examined variation in immune responses under natural conditions in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris. Using 14 colonies reared in the field, we compared the immune response to an artificial implant between workers that could or could not forage (86 control and 91 nonforaging workers). Foraging activity was prevented by cutting a large part of the wings. As expected, control workers had lower immune responses than nonforaging workers in 10 of 14 colonies. Overall, the treatment effect was significant even though weak, suggestive of a trade-off between immune defence and foraging activity. We also examined the environmental factors that might covary with the immune response in workers. The immune response significantly decreased in workers that were naturally infected by the intestinal parasite Crithidia bombi and increased with a measure of colony success, the maximum number of workers. These correlations suggest that the strength of immune responses reflects individual, and hence colony condition.
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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 | 0.000 |
| 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) | 0.001 | 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 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".