INVESTIGADORES
PALACIOS Maria Gabriela
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Relationships among diverse immune defense measures in free-living tree swallows.
Autor/es:
PALACIOS, M. G.; CUNNICK, J. E.; WINKLER, D. W.; VLECK, C. M.
Lugar:
Westminster, Colorado, EEUU
Reunión:
Congreso; Intersociety Meeting: Global Change and Global Science: Comparative Physiology in a Changing World"; 2010
Institución organizadora:
American Physiological Society
Resumen:
Knowledge on how immune defense indices commonly measured in wild animals are related to one another is important for the advancement of ecological immunology. Identifying immune indices that vary in unison and those that show trade-offs within individuals is relevant not only to the understanding of immune system function in free-living animals, but also to selecting the number and type of immune measures more likely to be useful in future studies. Here we explored the relationships among six indices of immune defense measured simultaneously in individual free-living tree swallows. A principal components analysis of the indices identified three main axes of variation, representing variation in T-cell function, B-cell function, and innate immune function respectively. Indices within each axis tended to be positively correlated, while indices in different axes were uncorrelated. Only when variation in age, body condition, and general quality among individuals was taken into account, a trade-off between T-cell and B-cell function became apparent. Our results suggest that despite the complexity of the immune system and the challenge of working with non-model, free-living animals, important insights into immune defense strategies in an ecological context can be gained by using diverse indices of immune defense commonly measured in ecoimmunology studies. This research was partially funded by the National Science Foundation and Iowa State University (William Clark Award).