Nosema (Microsporidia) parasites in social hymenoptera from Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Hymenopteran insects are important pollinators for agriculture, valued at billions of dollars annually. Widespread decline of insect pollinators has been recently documented, with parasites being one probable contributor. Specifically, Nosema (Microsporidia) are associated with reduced colony productivity in social hymenoptera. I studied prevalence, intensity, distribution, and Nosema species in honeybees (Apis mellifera), bumblebees (Bombus spp.), and wasps (Polistes spp., Vespula spp.) from various locations in Nova Scotia (NS) and Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada. These data may be important to future studies of Nosema epidemiology. To quantify Nosema infection, I counted spores from the gut of each species using light microscopy. To determine species present in honeybees I additionally sequenced the 16S rRNA gene from samples that had spores. I sampled 430 honeybee colonies representing 8 operations in NS, and 12 colonies representing 3 operations in PEI. In NS, 61.4%, of honeybee colonies were positive, with spore intensity per bee ranging from 0 to 33,600,000. In PEI, 91.7% of honeybee colonies were positive, with spore intensity ranging from 0 to 44,050,000. In NS, N. ceranae was widespread (prevalence 87%), but it was absent in PEI. For bumble bees, I sampled 26 and 19 individuals from NS and PEI, respectively. In NS, prevalence of N. bombi in bumblebees was 57.7% with spore intensity ranging from 0 to 9,600,000, whereas in PEI prevalence was 63.2% with spore intensity ranging from 0 to 13,600,000. No Nosema spp. were found in the 40 Polistes spp. wasps; however spores were detected in 67% of 33 Vespula spp. wasps. Understanding the distribution of Nosema may be useful in developing methods of control.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".