Low prevalence of zoonotic food-borne parasites <i>Toxoplasma gondii</i> and <i>Trichinella</i> spp., but high prevalence of a potential marine <i>Sarcocystis</i> spp., in Eastern Beaufort Sea beluga whales (<i>Delphinapterus leucas</i>) harvested in the Canadian Arctic
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Beluga whales ( Delphinapterus leucas (Pallas, 1776)) are traditional food sources for Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic. In response to community concerns about zoonotic parasites ( Toxoplasma gondii and Trichinella spp.), the aim of this study was for harvesters, government, and researchers to jointly determine prevalence of selected parasites in belugas harvested from the Eastern Beaufort Sea population between 2014 and 2021. We used multiple molecular and serological assays to detect Toxoplasma gondii in the absence of gold standards. Antibodies against Toxoplasma gondii were detected in less than 1% ( n = 1/120) of belugas using multiple commercial and in-house serological tests. Based on multiple molecular assays, Toxoplasma gondii DNA was detected in 1% ( n = 1/97) of belugas. Trichinella larvae were not detected in diaphragms ( n = 42) or tongues ( n = 108) by the internationally recognized pepsin/HCl artificial digestion method. Sarcocysts were observed on histology in 6/26 beluga examined in 2015–2016 and DNA of an unidentified species of Sarcocystis sp. was detected in skeletal muscle of 59% ( n = 46/78) of belugas. Phylogenetic analyses indicate a close relationship between the Sarcocystis found in belugas and those from other marine mammals, suggestive of a marine life cycle requiring further investigation. Our findings reflect a low prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii and Trichinella spp., and therefore low risk of human exposure to these parasites through the consumption of belugas from the Eastern Beaufort Sea.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".