Microscopic exploration of alopecia in Guadalupe fur seals from the San Benito Archipelago, Mexico
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Until recently, there were no sightings of alopecia in pinnipeds in Mexico. However, juvenile male Guadalupe fur seals ( Arctocephalus philippii townsendii Merriam, 1897) with patchy ventral alopecia have been sighted at the San Benito Archipelago, in the Mexican Northern Pacific. Given that the species is classified as endangered and considered of priority for conservation under Mexican law and has experienced population declines exceeding 50% in certain years, exploring factors that could be indicative of health problems is relevant. We captured 13 juvenile male fur seals at West San Benito Island during 2017 and 2018 and collected skin scrapings and fur samples for routine dermatological analysis, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray spectroscopy. Guard fur showed loss of structural integrity, medullary damage, and perforations, while damage to the underfur was less common. We found no evidence of dermatophytes or ectoparasites commonly associated with alopecia. We suggest that fur damage might be caused by nutritional or metabolic alterations secondary to an exogenous stressor, but further studies are needed to confirm this possibility. This is the first microscopic exploration of alopecia in pinniped in Mexican waters.
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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) | 0.001 | 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".