New evidence from the northern Apennines, Italy, suggests a southward expansion of Echinococcus multilocularis range in Europe
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Echinococcus multilocularis (Em) is a neglected zoonotic cestode circulating among wild canids and voles across the northern hemisphere, and is the aetiological agent of alveolar echinococcosis in humans. The expansion of the European distribution of this parasite has been raising public health concerns in recent decades. We aimed to investigate the occurrence of Em and other taeniids in wild carnivore faeces in the Apuan Alps Regional Park and the Monte Pisano mountain chain (northern Tuscany), a few hundred kilometres from the nearest report of Em in Italy. Using standard flotation-sieving and nested PCR of partial cox1 sequences on single harvested Taeniid eggs, we detected several Em haplotypes in red foxes and grey wolves in both study areas, suggesting limited genetic diversity. However, these findings could not be confirmed using more sensitive qPCR probes from the same samples. In addition, we report eggs of Taenia krabbei and T. hydatigena from wolves, Dipylidium caninum and Mesocestoides sp. in foxes, and T. polyacantha and Mesocestoides litteratus in both foxes and mustelids. Further investigation of the distribution of Em in the northern Apennines is necessary to assess if the presence of this potentially lethal zoonotic parasite is stable and expanding southward.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".