Rantala Markus J, Dubovskiy Ivan M, Pölkki Mari, Krama Tatjana, Contreras-Garduño Jorge, Krams Indrikis A
Department of Biology, Section of Ecology, University of Turku, FI-20014 Turku, Finland.
Laboratory of Biological Plant Protection and Biotechnology, Department Plant Protection, Novosibirsk State Agrarian University, 630039 Novosibirsk, Russia.
J Fungi (Basel). 2020 Nov 19;6(4):298. doi: 10.3390/jof6040298.
Juvenile hormone has been suggested to be a potential mediator in the trade-off between mating and insects' immunity. Studies on various insect taxons have found that juvenile hormone interferes with humoral and cellular immunity. Although this was shown experimentally, studies using highly virulent parasites or pathogens are lacking so far. In this study, we tested if juvenile hormone administration affected resistance against entomopathogenic fungi, , in the mealworm beetle, . In previous studies with juvenile hormone has been found to reduce a major humoral immune effector-system (phenoloxidase) in both sexes and decrease the encapsulation response in males. Here, we found that juvenile hormone administration prolonged survival time after infection with in males but reduced survival time in females. This study indicates that the effects of juvenile hormone on insect immunity might be more complicated than previously considered. We also suggest that there might be a trade-off between specific and non-specific immunity since, in males, juvenile hormone enhances specific immunity but corrupts non-specific immunity. Our study highlights the importance of using real parasites and pathogens in immuno-ecological studies.
保幼激素被认为是昆虫交配与免疫权衡中的潜在调节因子。对各种昆虫类群的研究发现，保幼激素会干扰体液免疫和细胞免疫。尽管这已通过实验得到证明，但迄今为止，缺乏使用高毒力寄生虫或病原体的研究。在本研究中，我们测试了给予保幼激素是否会影响黄粉虫对昆虫病原真菌的抗性。在之前对黄粉虫的研究中发现，保幼激素会降低两性中一种主要的体液免疫效应系统（酚氧化酶），并降低雄性的包囊反应。在此，我们发现给予保幼激素会延长雄性感染白僵菌后的存活时间，但会缩短雌性的存活时间。这项研究表明，保幼激素对昆虫免疫的影响可能比之前认为的更为复杂。我们还认为，特异性免疫和非特异性免疫之间可能存在权衡，因为在雄性中，保幼激素增强了特异性免疫，但破坏了非特异性免疫。我们的研究强调了在免疫生态学研究中使用真实寄生虫和病原体的重要性。
