The cost of an immune response: vaccination reduces parental effort
Författare
Summary, in English
A fundamental assumption of theories of the ecology and evolution of inducible defences is that protective responses to attacks by parasites or predators should not only have benefits, but also costs. The vertebrate immune system is by far the best studied example of an inducible defence, yet little is known about the costs of an immune response, especially in natural populations. To test: if an immune response per se is costly, we induced an antibody response in female blue tits, Parus caeruleus, by immunising them with human diphtheria-tetanus vaccine, and compared their nestling-feeding rate with that of saline-injected controls. We found that vaccinated females reduced their nestling feeding rate, thus demonstrating a cost of the immune response in the currency of parental effort.
Avdelning/ar
Publiceringsår
2000
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
382-386
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Ecology Letters
Volym
3
Issue
5
Länkar
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Wiley-Blackwell
Ämne
- Biological Sciences
Status
Published
Projekt
- Immunoecology
Forskningsgrupp
- Molecular Ecology and Evolution Lab
- Life History and Functional Ecology
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 1461-023X