Phoretic mites do not affect burying beetle reproductive success, despite eliminating fly competitors
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Interspecific interactions exist along a continuum from parasitism to mutualism, but the fitness costs and benefits of these associations may be fluid, depending on factors like abiotic conditions and interactions with other organisms. Phoretic mites ( Poecilochirus spp.) use burying beetles ( Nicrophorus spp.) as a means of locating and traveling to carrion, the site of both organisms' reproduction. Several species of Dipteran fly also reproduce on carrion, competing with beetles and mites. Mites could benefit their beetle hosts by reducing the abundance of these flies, but experimental evidence of this benefit is mixed. We experimentally tested the fitness effects of Poecilochirus mites on N. orbicollis and determined if these effects are dependent on the presence of fly competitors by experimentally manipulating both fly and mite presence with beetles breeding in a semi‐natural environment. Fly colonisation of carrion reduced beetle reproductive success, and mites reduced fly numbers. Despite this, the fitness cost of flies was not ameliorated by mites. Mites did not affect beetle reproductive success, regardless of fly presence or absence. Although beetle reproductive success was not affected by mites, beetles were physically compromised by high mite loads; beetles with more mites had slower righting times than beetles with fewer mites. Our results suggest that these mites are commensals of burying beetles, although unmeasured benefits of reductions of flies could tip this relationship to a mutualism, and unmeasured fitness costs of compromised locomotion could tip it to parasitism.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".