Sarabian Cecile, MacIntosh Andrew J J
Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Inuyama, Aichi 484-8506, Japan.
Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Inuyama, Aichi 484-8506, Japan Wildlife Research Center, Kyoto University, Sakyo, Kyoto 606-8203, Japan
Biol Lett. 2015 Nov;11(11). doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2015.0757.
Parasites are ubiquitous in nature and can be costly to animal fitness, so hosts have evolved behavioural counter-strategies to mitigate infection risk. We investigated feeding-related infection-avoidance strategies in Japanese macaques via field-experimentation and observation. We first examined risk sensitivity during foraging tasks involving faecally contaminated or debris-covered food items, and then investigated individual tendencies to manipulate food items during natural foraging bouts. We concurrently monitored geohelminth infection in all subjects. We ran a principal component analysis on the observational/experimental data to generate a hygienic index across individuals and found that hygienic tendencies towards faeces avoidance and food manipulation correlated negatively with geohelminth infection. Females scored higher in hygienic tendencies than males, which might contribute to the common vertebrate pattern of male-biased infection. The behavioural tendencies observed may reflect a general form of hygiene, providing a mechanism of behavioural immunity against parasites with implications for the evolution and diversification of health maintenance strategies in humans.
寄生虫在自然界中无处不在，可能会对动物的健康造成代价，因此宿主进化出了行为应对策略来降低感染风险。我们通过野外实验和观察，研究了日本猕猴与进食相关的避免感染策略。我们首先在涉及粪便污染或有碎屑覆盖的食物的觅食任务中检查风险敏感性，然后调查在自然觅食过程中个体对食物进行处理的倾向。我们同时监测了所有研究对象的土源性蠕虫感染情况。我们对观察/实验数据进行主成分分析，以生成个体的卫生指数，发现避免接触粪便和处理食物的卫生倾向与土源性蠕虫感染呈负相关。雌性在卫生倾向方面的得分高于雄性，这可能是导致常见的脊椎动物雄性感染率偏高模式的原因之一。观察到的行为倾向可能反映了一种普遍的卫生形式，为抵御寄生虫提供了行为免疫机制，这对人类健康维持策略的进化和多样化具有启示意义。
