Variability of faecal microbiota and antibiotic resistance genes in flocks of migratory gulls and comparison with the surrounding environment
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Gulls commonly rely on human-generated waste as their primary food source, contributing to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and their resistance genes, both locally and globally. Our understanding of this process remains incomplete, particularly in relation to its potential interaction with surrounding soil and water. We studied the lesser black-backed gull, Larus fuscus, as a model to examine the spatial variation of faecal bacterial communities, antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), and mobile genetic elements (MGEs) and its relationship with the surrounding water and soil. We conducted sampling campaigns within a connectivity network of different flocks of gulls moving across functional units (FUs), each of which represents a module of highly interconnected patches of habitats used for roosting and feeding. The FUs vary in habitat use, with some gulls using more polluted sites (notably landfills), while others prefer more natural environments (e.g., wetlands or beaches). Faecal bacterial communities in gulls from flocks that visit and spend more time in landfills exhibited higher richness and diversity. The faecal microbiota showed a high compositional overlap with bacterial communities in soil. The overlap was greater when compared to landfill (11%) than to wetland soils (6%), and much lower when compared to bacterial communities in surrounding water (2% and 1% for landfill and wetland water, respectively). The relative abundance of ARGs and MGEs were similar between FUs, with variations observed only for specific families of ARGs and MGEs. When exploring the faecal carriage of ARGs and MGEs in bird faeces relative to soil and water compartments, gull faeces were enriched in ARGs classified as High-Risk. Our results shed light on the complex dynamics of antibiotic resistance spread in wild bird populations, providing insights into the interactions among gull movement and feeding behavior, habitat characteristics, and the dissemination of antibiotic resistance determinants across environmental reservoirs.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.001 |
| 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 | 0.001 |
| 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".