Survey of Nasal Mites (Acari: Rhinonyssidae, Ereynetidae, Turbinoptidae) in Birds from Three States in the United States
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Avian nasal mites are obligate endoparasites that spend their entire life in the respiratory system of birds. In North America, bird nasal mites are represented by different unrelated families in three different orders of mites: Rhinonyssidae (Mesostigmata), Ereynetidae (Prostigmata), and the Cytoditidae and Turbinoptidae (Astigmata). The most-diverse and most-abundant family of nasal mites is the Rhinonyssidae, in which mite species may have different levels of host specificity from host orders to families or even species level. Nasal mites in North America have been surveyed in different locations, such as studies ranging from the Gulf Coast of the US to Canada. From those surveys, the reported prevalence of nasal mites infesting bird hosts varied from approximately 25-45% of species that were infested. In this study, I examined birds from three states in the US (Arkansas, Illinois and Texas) for nasal mites. I found levels of mite prevalence that were similar to results reported from other previous studies, and I added 21 new North American host records. I also studied host specificity within the bird families Parulidae and Emberizidae. I examined 149 birds from those two bird families, and 38 % of the species had nasal mites. These two host families were commonly infested by two Ptilonyssus nasal mites (P. sairae and P. japuibensis), which are part of a group of morphologically similar mites called the “sairae” complex. This complex suggest that all these related mite species could actually be a single mite species with a broad host range, or could be a related group of species, each of which is highly of specific. Additionally, I surveyed nasal mites collected from the brood parasite, brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater), in specimens from Texas and Arkansas. For this survey, 126 individuals were analyzed, and 84 (66.6 %) were found to be infested with nasal mites, which included new host records for the cowbirds. I addressed the question of whether cowbirds acquire nasal mites when the host parent is feeding its young, or whether mites are transferred during Social interaction of related birds that are commonly found in large, multi-species flocks.
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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 | 0.001 | 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) | 0.000 | 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".