Fireworms are a reservoir and potential vector for coral-infecting apicomplexans
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Corals (Cnidaria; Anthozoa) play critical roles as habitat-forming species with a wide range, from warm shallow-water tropical coral reefs to cold-water ecosystems. They also represent a complex ecosystem as intricate holobionts made up of microbes from all domains of the Tree of Life that can play significant roles in host health and fitness. The corallicolids are a clade of apicomplexans that infect a wide variety of anthozoans worldwide and can influence the thermal tolerance of habitat-forming corals. Despite their potentially important impacts on reef ecosystems, much of the basic biology and ecology of corallicolids remains unclear. Apicomplexans often have a closed life cycle, with minimal environmental exposure and sometimes multiple hosts. Corallicolids have only been documented in anthozoan hosts, with no known secondary/reservoir hosts or vectors. Here, we show that abundant corallicolid sequences are recovered from bearded fireworms (Hermodice carunculata) in tropical reef habitats off Curaçao and that they are distinct from corallicolids infecting the corals on which the fireworms were feeding at the time of their collection. These data are consistent with a fireworm-specific corallicolid infection, not merely a byproduct of the worms feeding on infected corals. Furthermore, we suggest that H. carunculata is potentially a vector moving corallicolids among coral hosts through its feces. These findings not only expand our understanding of the ecological interactions within coral reef ecosystems but also highlight the potential role of host-associated parasites in shaping the resilience of reef habitats.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".