Speciation of Selenium in Stream\nInsects Using X-ray Absorption\nSpectroscopy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Selenium contamination in the environment is a widespread\nproblem affecting insects and other wildlife. Insects\noccupy a critical middle link and aid in trophic transfer of\nselenium in many terrestrial and freshwater food chains,\nbut the mechanisms of selenium uptake through the food\nchain are poorly understood. In particular, biotransformation\nof selenium by insects into different chemical forms\nwill greatly influence how toxic or benign the selenium is\nto that organism or to its predators. We have used\nX-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) to identify the chemical\nform of selenium in insects inhabiting selenium contaminated\nstreams near Hinton, Alberta (Canada). Selenium K near-edge spectra indicate a variability of selenium speciation\namong the insects that included mayflies (Ephemeroptera),\nstoneflies (Plecoptera), caddisflies (Trichoptera), and\ncraneflies (Diptera). Higher percentages of inorganic selenium\nwere observed in primary consumers, detritivores, and\nfilter feeders than in predatory insects. Among the organic\nforms of selenium, organic selenides constituted a major\nfraction in most organisms. A species modeled as\ntrimethylselenonium was observed during the pupal stage\nof caddisflies. These results provide insights into how\nthe insects cope with their toxic cargo, including how the\nselenium is biotransformed into less toxic forms and\nhow it can be eliminated from the insects. More broadly,\nthis study demonstrates the strengths of XAS to probe the\neffects of heavy elements at trace levels in insects from\nthe field.
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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 | 0.000 | 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 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.034 | 0.001 |
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".