Spatial heterogeneity and temporal variations in Echinococcus multilocularis infections in wild \nhosts in a North American urban setting
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Echinococcus multilocularis, the causative agent of human alveolar echinococcosis, has the potential to circulate \nin urban areas where wild host populations and humans coexist. The spatial and temporal distribution \nof infection in wild hosts locally affects the risk of transmission to humans. We investigated the \nspatial and temporal patterns of E. multilocularis infection in coyotes and rodent intermediate hosts \nwithin the city of Calgary, Canada, and the association between spatial variations in coyote infection \nand the relative composition of small mammal assemblages. Infection by E. multilocularis was examined \nin small mammals and coyote faeces collected monthly in five city parks from June 2012 to June 2013. \nCoyote faeces were analysed using a ZnCl2 centrifugation and sedimentation protocol. Infection in intermediate \nhosts was assessed through lethal trapping and post-mortem analysis. Parasite eggs and metacestodes \nwere morphologically identified and molecularly confirmed through species-specific PCR assays. \nOf 982 small mammals captured, infection was detected in 2/305 (0.66%) deer mice (Peromyscus \nmaniculatus), 2/267 (0.75%) meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus), and 1/71 (1.41%) southern red \nbacked voles (Myodes gapperi). Overall faecal prevalence in coyotes was 21.42% (n = 385) and varied \nacross sites, ranging from 5.34% to 61.48%. Differences in coyote faecal prevalence across sites were consistent \nwith local variations in the relative abundance of intermediate hosts within the small mammal \nassemblages. Infections peaked in intermediate hosts during autumn (0.68%) and winter (3.33%), and \nin coyotes during spring (43.47%). Peaks of infections in coyote faeces up to 83.8% in autumn were \ndetected in a hyper-endemic area. To the best of our knowledge, our findings represent the first evidence \nof a sylvatic life-cycle of E. multilocularis in a North American urban setting, and provide new insights into \nthe complexity of the parasite transmission ecology.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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) | 0.000 | 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 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".