Short term heat stress alters the hematological, immunological, and plasma metabolomic responses of Florida Cracker sheep
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The study aimed to investigate the effects of short-term heat stress on physiological, hematological, immunological, and metabolomic responses in Florida Cracker ewes. Fourteen Florida Cracker ewes were randomly assigned to either heat stress (HT) or cooling (control, CTL) conditions, respectively, for a duration of six weeks during the summer season. Ambient temperature and relative humidity data for HT and CTL ewes were recorded weekly to estimate temperature humidity index (THI). Respiration rate and rectal temperature were measured for each experimental ewe. Blood samples were collected from each ewe at baseline (week 0) and at week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 post-exposure for hematology analysis and plasma extraction. Plasma samples were used for analysis of IgA level and to conduct targeted metabolomics. Targeted metabolomics analyzed a total of 50 metabolites, including organic acids, amino acids, hexoses, lipids, and carnitines. The THI for the HT and CTL groups ranged from 81.3 – 89.5 and from 73.5 – 75.6, respectively. The HT group exhibited a significant increase (P < 0.05) in respiratory rate compared to the CTL group. No significant changes were observed in rectal temperature or IgA levels between the experimental groups. Hematology analysis revealed a significant increase (P < 0.05) in neutrophil count and neutrophil percentage (%) and a decrease in lymphocyte percentage (%) at week 3 in the HT group. Targeted metabolomics analysis identified 19 differentially abundant metabolites between the HT and CTL groups. Pathway enrichment analysis showed upregulation of fatty acid biosynthesis, glutathione metabolism, primary bile biosynthesis, porphyrin metabolism, and glycine, serine, and threonine metabolism (P ≤ 0.05) in the HT group compared to CTL. Our findings highlight that short-term heat stress alters the immunological, hematological, and metabolomic profile of Florida Cracker ewes. Understanding these changes can contribute to developing effective management strategies to mitigate the detrimental impact of heat stress on sheep operations in the southern U.S.
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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 | 0.000 |
| 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".