Variability of testes morphology and the presence of testis-ova in the European blind cave salamander (Proteus anguinus)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The European blind cave salamander, Proteus anguinus, is a neotenic, permanently aquatic amphibian with a very long life span, late sexual maturity, and the ability to reproduce for at least 30 years. Proteus is considered to be vulnerable species, and yet very little is known about its reproductive biology. The objective of this study is to describe the detailed morphology of the testes of adult Proteus and determine the maturation state of the gonads and gametogenesis with respect to body size and seasonality. This research showed that testis size increases with adult male body length, but the shape and meiotic condition of the testes are highly variable and independent of the length of the specimen. The testis of Proteus has a simple cystic type of organization in which cysts are enclosed in lobules, with synchronous maturation of the germ cells within each cyst. Spermatogenesis progresses in a caudocephalic direction within the testis, as in other salamanders, and appears to be seasonal, despite the fact that Proteus is a cave animal living in stable environmental conditions. Surprisingly, the testes of approximately one third of the specimens, regardless oftheir morphology or meiotic condition, contained testis-ova located randomly among groups of spermatogonia and spermatocytes. These testes-ova contained germinal vesicles with lampbrush chromosomes, and thus correspond to primary oocytes. Thepresence of testis-ova may be related to a sex-chromosome turnover involving X-Y translocation that was recently discovered in Proteus.
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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 | 0.001 | 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".