Questing height of <i>Haemaphysalis megaspinosa</i> Saito, 1969 (Acari: Ixodidae) is influenced by developmental stages and relative humidity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Haemaphysalis megaspinosa Saito, 1969 is a three-host tick species that employs an “ambush strategy” when questing for host animals on vegetation. This strategy involves adjusting the questing height to align with the body size of potential hosts, thereby facilitating external parasitism. The questing height of ticks varies across developmental stages, and while physiological theories suggest that immature ticks are more susceptible to desiccation due to their thinner exoskeletons, empirical evidence directly linking developmental stage, questing height, and environmental conditions remains limited across tick species. We examined how questing height differs according to developmental stage and how it is influenced by environmental conditions (temperature, relative humidity, and soil moisture) and host body size. Our analysis revealed a significant positive association between questing height, developmental stage, and relative humidity. In larvae and nymphs, the questing height increased with relative humidity, indicating that these stages adjusted their positioning in response to humidity levels. In contrast, the questing height of adults remained largely unaffected by relative humidity and was predominantly observed within the estimated possible range of adhesion for large mammals such as sika deer ( Cervus nippon Temminck, 1836) and wild boar ( Sus scrofa Linnaeus, 1758). These findings suggest that the response of tick-questing behavior to environmental conditions varies by developmental stage, influencing host selection in ticks using the ambush strategy.
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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".