Tag, you’re it!: viral diseases in native otters of south-central Chile due to coexistence with invasive American mink and domestic dogs
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction Biological invasions represent a significant epidemiological route for the introduction and dispersion of pathogens, facilitating disease emergence and transmission among native biodiversity. In the temperate rainforest ecoregion of south-central Chile, the native semiaquatic mustelid Lontra felina (marine otter) and L. provocax (southern river otter) coexist both sympatrically and syntopically with two invasive species—American mink ( Neogale vison ) and domestic dog ( Canis lupus familiaris ), that act as carriers and hosts of canine parvovirus and distemper. Methodology To assess the occurrence of both diseases, we: (1) collected serum and mucous membrane samples from four species across three sectors of this ecoregion; and (2) employed serological immunoassays (IgG) and genetic analyses (qPCR-HRM) to detect both active and past infections, and to genotypically characterize the two viral agents. Results 75% of L. felina individuals tested positive for parvovirus. The melting temperature (T m ) of the analyzed DNA fragment revealed two diverging groups, suggesting the presence of two genotypic variants of the virus within this mammalian assemblage. L. felina individuals carried the variant with the higher T m , which was also detected in N. vison from the same locality. In contrast, L. provocax individuals carried the variant with the lower T m , while dogs and minks hosted both viral variants. Canine distemper virus was detected only in dogs that also tested positive for parvovirus. Discussion Our results present the first report of parvovirus in L. felina and support the hypothesis that N. vison and dogs acts as metareservoir and mink also as a bridge host for its transmission. In the study area, the synanthropic behavior of N. vison and its interactions with domestic and native species may facilitate the diversification of emergent pathogens within Chilean native fauna.
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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) | 0.002 | 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".