Genetic diversity and phylogeographic relationships of <i>Dermacentor variabilis</i> (Acari: Ixodidae) within an established population in southern Manitoba (Canada), and the prevalence of <i>Rickettsia montanensis</i> and <i>Francisella</i>-like endosymbionts
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The primary objective of this study was to determine if DNA sequences of the mitochondrial (mt) cytochrome oxidase c subunit 1 gene (cox1) and/or the mt 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene can be used to study the population genetics and phylogeography of the American dog tick, Dermacentor variabilis (Say). DNA sequences were determined for 200 adult ticks collected from an established population in a region of Manitoba (Canada) where there have been recent outbreaks of bovine anaplasmosis. Given this, a secondary objective was to test these ticks for the presence of Anaplasma marginale Theiler and 2 other bacterial pathogens, Rickettsia rickettsii Brumpt and Francisella tularensis (McCoy and Chapin 1912) Dorofe'ev 1947. However, no ticks were PCR-positive for these bacteria, whereas 15% of ticks were PCR-positive for R. montanensis Weiss and Moulder and 96% contained Francisella-like endosymbionts. Nucleotide and haplotype diversity among ticks was greater for cox1 than the 16S rRNA gene, thus cox1 is more useful for examining the genetic diversity within and among D. variabilis populations. The 33 cox1 haplotypes could be separated into 3 haplogroups, but when combined with sequence data from GenBank, 6 clades were evident, 2 of which comprised ticks from primarily Saskatchewan, Manitoba, western Ontario, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. These findings indicate that cox1 can be used to understand the phylogeography of D. variabilis, but more sequences are needed from individuals in other populations across geographical range of this tick species, particularly those on the Canadian prairies where D. variabilis is undergoing range expansion.
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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 | 0.001 |
| 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 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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".