Molecular Detection of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, Babesia odocoilei, Babesia microti and Anaplasma phagocytophilum in Ixodes Ticks in British Columbia, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In total, 76 Ixodes ticks were collected in southwestern British Columbia (BC). Five Ixodes species (I. angustus, I. cookei, I. pacificus, I. scapularis, and I. spinipalpis), which bite humans, were collected and tested. Two Ixodes spp. (I. rugosus, I. sculptus), which do not bite humans, were collected and tested. Using real-time and nested PCR, the four pathogens were detected, namely Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (19/76, 25%), Babesia odocoilei (12/76, 16%), Babesia microti (1/76, 1%), and Anaplasma phagocytophylum (2/76, 3%). We provide the first report of Ixodes scapularis parasitizing an eastern cottontail, Sylvilagus floridanus, in Canada. We document the first molecular identification of Ixodes sculptus parasitizing an American mink, Neogale vision; this tick-host parasitism occurred on Vancouver Island, BC. At an established population on mainland BC, Ixodes pacificus adults (7/15, 51%) were positive for Babesia odocoilei. We report the first Ixodes pacificus parasitizing a Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos. Based on the findings of this tick-host-pathogen study, healthcare practitioners must be aware that at least 5 different Ixodes spp. transmit tick-borne zoonotic pathogens in BC. Babesia odocoilei does not respond to doxycycline treatment.
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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 | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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 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".