Berzins Lisha L, Gilchrist H Grant, Matson Kevin D, Burness Gary
Environmental and Life Sciences Graduate Program, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario K9J 7B8, Canada.
Physiol Biochem Zool. 2011 Mar-Apr;84(2):222-9. doi: 10.1086/658373.
Life-history theory predicts that there should be negative fitness consequences, in terms of future reproduction and survival, for parents with increased reproductive effort. We examined whether increased incubation demand affected innate immunity and body condition by performing a clutch-size manipulation experiment in black guillemots (Cepphus grylle). We found that plasma from males incubating experimentally enlarged clutches exhibited significantly reduced lysis titers compared with plasma from males incubating control clutches, while this was not observed in females. The increased incubation demand also impacted agglutination titers differently in males and females, although the effect of treatment was not significant in either sex. Among all birds, lysis titers increased and haptoglobin concentrations decreased from mid- to late incubation. Natural antibody-mediated agglutination titers and body condition were highly repeatable within the incubation bout and between years. This suggests that agglutination titers may serve as a reliable and resilient index of the immunological character of individuals in future studies. Overall, this study demonstrates that increased incubation demand impacts indices of innate immunity differently in males and females. The potential for different components of the immune system to be impacted sex-specifically should be considered in future studies linking immune function and life-history trade-offs.
生活史理论预测，对于繁殖投入增加的亲本而言，就未来的繁殖和生存而言，应该存在负面的适合度后果。我们通过在黑海鸠（Cepphus grylle）中进行窝卵数操纵实验，研究了增加的孵化需求是否会影响先天免疫和身体状况。我们发现，与孵化对照窝卵数的雄性的血浆相比，孵化实验性增大窝卵数的雄性的血浆表现出显著降低的裂解效价，而在雌性中未观察到这种情况。增加的孵化需求对雄性和雌性的凝集效价的影响也不同，尽管处理对两性的影响均不显著。在所有鸟类中，从孵化中期到后期，裂解效价升高而触珠蛋白浓度降低。天然抗体介导的凝集效价和身体状况在孵化期内以及不同年份之间具有高度重复性。这表明在未来的研究中，凝集效价可能作为个体免疫特征的可靠且有弹性的指标。总体而言，本研究表明增加的孵化需求对雄性和雌性先天免疫指标的影响不同。在未来将免疫功能与生活史权衡联系起来的研究中，应考虑免疫系统不同组成部分受到性别特异性影响的可能性。
