ETH Zürich, Institute of Integrative Biology, Universitätstrasse 16, Zürich, Switzerland.
J Evol Biol. 2012 Jun;25(6):1053-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2012.02507.x. Epub 2012 Apr 5.
The outcome of defence by the invertebrate immunity has recently been shown to be more complex than previously thought. In particular, the outcome is affected by biotic and abiotic environmental variation, host genotype, parasite genotype and their interaction. Knowledge of conditions under which environmental variation affects the outcome of an infection is one important question that relates to this complexity. We here use the model system of the bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, infected by the trypanosome, Crithidia bombi, combined with a split-colony design to test the influence of the parasite environment during larval rearing on adult resistance. We find that genotype-specific interactions are maintained and adult resistance is not influenced. This demonstrates that environmental dependence of bumblebee-trypanosome interactions is not ubiquitous, and yet unknown constraints will maintain standard coevolutionary dynamics under such environmental deviations.
无脊椎动物免疫的防御结果最近被证明比以前想象的更为复杂。特别是，其结果受到生物和非生物环境变化、宿主基因型、寄生虫基因型及其相互作用的影响。了解环境变化在何种条件下影响感染结果是与这种复杂性相关的一个重要问题。在这里，我们使用熊蜂（Bombus terrestris）被原生动物（Crithidia bombi）感染的模型系统，结合分裂殖民地设计来测试幼虫饲养过程中寄生虫环境对成虫抗性的影响。我们发现基因型特异性相互作用得以维持，成虫抗性不受影响。这表明熊蜂-原生动物相互作用的环境依赖性并非普遍存在，而未知的限制因素将在这种环境偏差下维持标准的协同进化动态。
