Lee Kelly A, Klasing Kirk C
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2004 Oct;19(10):523-9. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2004.07.012.
Invasive species are of increasing conservation and economic concern, yet mechanisms underlying invasions remain poorly understood. We propose that variation in immune defences might help explain why only some introduced populations become invasive. Introduced species escape many of their native diseases, but also face novel pathogens that can induce costly, and sometimes deadly, immune responses in naïve hosts. Therefore, favouring less resource-demanding and dangerous defence mechanisms and allocating a greater proportion of resources to growth and reproduction should favour invasion. Specifically, we argue that successful invaders should reduce costly systemic inflammatory responses, which are associated with fever and metabolic and behavioural changes, and rely more heavily on less expensive antibody-mediated immunity. Here we provide supporting arguments for this hypothesis and generate predictions that are testable using tools from the growing field of ecological immunology.
入侵物种对保护和经济构成的威胁日益增加，然而入侵背后的机制仍鲜为人知。我们认为，免疫防御的差异可能有助于解释为何只有部分引入种群会形成入侵态势。引入物种摆脱了许多本土疾病，但也面临着新的病原体，这些病原体可在未接触过的宿主中引发代价高昂甚至有时致命的免疫反应。因此，倾向于资源需求较低且危险性较小的防御机制，并将更大比例的资源分配给生长和繁殖，应有助于形成入侵态势。具体而言，我们认为成功的入侵者应减少代价高昂的全身性炎症反应（这与发热、代谢和行为变化相关），而更多地依赖成本较低的抗体介导免疫。在此，我们为这一假说提供支持论据，并做出一些可利用生态免疫学这一新兴领域的工具进行检验的预测。
