Cabrera-Martínez Lucia V, Herrera M L Gerardo, Cruz-Neto Ariovaldo P
Departamento de Zoologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho, Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brasil.
Estacion de Biologia Chamela, Instituto de Biología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, San Patricio, Jalisco, México.
PeerJ. 2018 Jun 5;6:e4627. doi: 10.7717/peerj.4627. eCollection 2018.
The acute phase response (APR) is the first line of defense of the vertebrate immune system against pathogens. Mounting an immune response is believed to be energetically costly but direct measures of metabolic rate during immune challenges contradict this assumption. The energetic cost of APR for birds is higher than for rodents, suggesting that this response is less expensive for mammals. However, the particularly large increase in metabolic rate after APR activation for a piscivorous bat () suggests that immune response might be unusually costly for bats. Here we quantified the energetic cost and body mass change associated with APR for the nectarivorous Pallas's long-tongued bat (). Activation of the APR resulted in a short-term decrease in body mass and an increase in resting metabolic rate (RMR) with a total energy cost of only 2% of the total energy expenditure estimated for . This increase in RMR was far from the large increase measured for piscivorous bats; rather, it was similar to the highest values reported for birds. Overall, our results suggest that the costs of APR for bats may vary interspecifically. Measurement of the energy cost of vertebrate immune response is limited to a few species and further work is warranted to evaluate its significance for an animal's energy budget.
急性期反应（APR）是脊椎动物免疫系统抵御病原体的第一道防线。人们认为启动免疫反应在能量方面代价高昂，但在免疫挑战期间对代谢率的直接测量与这一假设相矛盾。鸟类的APR能量消耗高于啮齿动物，这表明这种反应对哺乳动物来说成本较低。然而，食鱼蝙蝠（）在APR激活后代谢率特别大幅增加，这表明免疫反应对蝙蝠来说可能异常昂贵。在这里，我们量化了与花蜜食性的帕拉斯长舌蝠（）的APR相关的能量消耗和体重变化。APR的激活导致体重短期下降，静息代谢率（RMR）增加，总能量消耗仅占为（）估计的总能量支出的2%。RMR的这种增加远低于食鱼蝙蝠测量到的大幅增加；相反，它与鸟类报告的最高值相似。总体而言，我们的结果表明，蝙蝠的APR成本可能因物种而异。脊椎动物免疫反应能量消耗的测量仅限于少数物种，有必要进一步开展工作来评估其对动物能量预算的重要性。
