Phasmarhabditis californica (Nematoda: Rhabditidae) has Reduced Establishment Success and Progeny Production in the Presence of Pristionchus entomophagus (Nematoda: Diplogastridae)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Phasmarhabditis (syn. Pellioditis) californica is a facultative parasite that has been marketed as a popular biocontrol agent against pestiferous slugs in England, Scotland, and Wales. The necromenic nematode Pristionchus entomophagus has also been recovered from slugs infected with Ph. californica. In this study, we experimentally investigated the outcome of single and mixed applications of Pr. entomophagus and Ph. californica on the slug Deroceras reticulatum (Müller). Host mortality was comparable for single and mixed applications of Ph. californica, with time to death significantly shorter in both treatment groups compared with controls. However, trials with Pr. entomophagus alone did not cause any significant host mortality relative to controls. Compared with the single Ph. californica applications, mixed applications resulted in 67% fewer infective juveniles establishing in the host, and subsequently far fewer infective juveniles were recovered in the next generation. In contrast, the establishment rate and progeny production in Pr. entomophagus were not impacted by the presence of Ph. californica (i.e., mixed applications). Hence, the presence of Pr. entomophagus had a deleterious effect on the establishment success and progeny production of Ph. californica. Our findings reveal an asymmetrical, antagonistic interaction between Ph. californica and Pr. entomophagus and highlight the importance of understanding the ecological relationships between co-occurring species. A decrease in parasite establishment success and progeny production has the potential to directly impact the persistence, sustainability, and efficacy of Ph. californica as a biological control agent.
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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 | 0.001 | 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) | 0.000 | 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".