Department of Zoology, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, The Centre of Excellence FIBIR, Tartu University, Vanemuise 46, 51014 Tartu, Estonia.
Brain Behav Immun. 2011 Oct;25(7):1349-54. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2011.03.020. Epub 2011 Apr 5.
Immune system is highly integrated with the nervous and endocrine systems, which is thought to result in covariation between behavioural syndromes and stress- and immune-associated diseases. Very little is known about the associations between behaviour and immune traits in wild animals. Here we describe such an association in passerine birds, the greenfinches (Carduelis chloris). When wild-caught greenfinches are brought into captivity, some individuals damage their tail feathers against cage walls due to excited behaviour, while others retain their feathers in intact condition. We show that damage to tail feathers was associated with flapping flight movements and the frequency of such flapping bouts was individually consistent over 57 days. Birds with intact tails, i.e., relatively 'calm' individuals mounted stronger antibody response to a novel Brucella abortus antigen and their circulating phagocytes were capable of producing stronger oxidative burst in response to stimulation with bacterial lipopolysaccharide in vitro. As the behavioural trait was assessed 13-25 days before measuring immune responsiveness, our results demonstrate that individuals' coping styles with captivity predicted how these individuals would respond to forthcoming immune challenges. This is a novel evidence about covariation between immune responsiveness and a behavioural trait in a wild-caught animal.
免疫系统与神经系统和内分泌系统高度整合，这被认为导致了行为综合征与应激和免疫相关疾病之间的共变。关于野生动物的行为和免疫特征之间的关联，我们知之甚少。在这里，我们描述了雀形目鸟类绿雀（Carduelis chloris）中的这种关联。当野生捕获的绿雀被带入圈养时，由于兴奋的行为，一些个体的尾羽会在笼壁上受损，而另一些个体的尾羽则保持完整。我们表明，尾羽受损与拍打飞行运动有关，而这种拍打发作的频率在 57 天内个体间是一致的。尾羽完整的鸟类，即相对“冷静”的个体，对新型布鲁氏菌 abortus 抗原产生更强的抗体反应，其循环吞噬细胞在体外受到细菌脂多糖刺激时能够产生更强的氧化爆发。由于行为特征是在测量免疫反应性之前 13-25 天评估的，我们的结果表明，个体对圈养的应对方式预测了这些个体对即将到来的免疫挑战的反应方式。这是关于野生捕获动物的免疫反应性和行为特征之间共变的新证据。
