The ecology of immune state in a wild mammal, Mus musculus domesticus

Abstract

The immune state of wild animals is largely unknown. Knowing this and what affects it is important in understanding how infection and disease affects wild animals. The immune state of wild animals is also important in understanding the biology of their pathogens, which is directly relevant to explaining pathogen spillover among species, including to humans. The paucity of knowledge about wild animals' immune state is in stark contrast to our exquisitely detailed understanding of the immunobiology of laboratory animals. Making an immune response is costly, and many factors (such as age, sex, infection status, and body condition) have individually been shown to constrain or promote immune responses. But, whether or not these factors affect immune responses and immune state in wild animals, their relative importance, and how they interact (or do not) are unknown. Here, we have investigated the immune ecology of wild house mice—the same species as the laboratory mouse—as an example of a wild mammal, characterising their adaptive humoral, adaptive cellular, and innate immune state. Firstly, we show how immune variation is structured among mouse populations, finding that there can be extensive immune discordance among neighbouring populations. Secondly, we identify the principal factors that underlie the immunological differences among mice, showing that body condition promotes and age constrains individuals’ immune state, while factors such as microparasite infection and season are comparatively unimportant. By applying a multifactorial analysis to an immune system-wide analysis, our results bring a new and unified understanding of the immunobiology of a wild mammal.

Immunosenescence in wild animals: meta‐analysis and outlook

“…Depicted are phylogenetic relatedness on the left, scientific names for all species included (blue = data collected in wild population, red = data collected in captive population), and for each species the number of effects in each main component of the immune system and the relevant references. References: 1: (Lindsay et al ); 2: (Beirne et al ); 3: (Mazzaro et al ); 4: (Mellish et al ); 5: (Schneeberger et al ); 6: (Cheynel et al ); 7: (Graham et al ); 8: (Nussey et al ); 9: (Watson et al ); 10: (Grandoni et al ); 11: (Ezenwa & Jolles ); 12: (Ahmad et al ); 13: (Abolins et al ); 14: (Nehete et al ); 15: (Nehete et al ); 16: {Castro:2015hz}; 17: (Cicin‐Sain et al ); 18: (Čičin‐Šain et al ); 19: (Coe & Ershler ); 20: (Coe et al ); 21: (Ershler et al ): 22: (Higashino et al ): 23: (Eichberg et al ); 24: (Jayashankar et al ); 25: (Setchell et al ); 26: (Chakrabarti et al ); 27: (Sharma et al ); 28: (Massot et al ); 29: (Richard et al ); 30: (Madsen et al ); 31: (Ujvari & Madsen ); 32: (Ujvari & Madsen ); 33: (Sparkman & Palacios ); 34: (Zimmerman et al ); 35: (Zimmerman et al ); 36: (Zimmerman et al ); 37: (Groffen et al ); 38: (Lavoie et al ); 39: (Alonso‐Alvarez et al ); 40: (Hill et al ); 41: (Counihan & Hollmén ); 42: (Neggazi et al ); 43: (Terrón et al ); 44: (Apanius & Nisbet ); 45: (Lozano & Lank ); 46: (Lozano & Lank ); 47: (Nebel et al ); 48: (Torres & Velando ); 49: (Haussmann et al ); 50: (Lecomte et al ); 51: (Catry et al ); 52: (Wilcoxen et al ); 53: (Vermeulen et al ); 54: (Møller & Haussy ); 55: (Saino et al ); 56: (Palacios ...…”

Macroimmunology: The drivers and consequences of spatial patterns in wildlife immune defence

“…aid in decisions for the distance between field sites), sufficient data may not exist for a given host system or for closely related species. Researchers could instead use semi‐random site distributions (Abolins et al, ) or spatial gradients, such as sampling latitudinally (Adelman et al, ), at the core and limits of a geographic range (Ardia, ), or along range expansions of invasive species (Martin et al, ). As noted above, range expansions are particularly interesting for macroimmunology, as each is an explicit spatial and temporal process.…”

The demographic pattern of infection with chronic wasting disease in reindeer at an early epidemic stage

“…A common pattern among mammals is higher infection levels in males compared to females (Schalk and Forbes 1997, C ordoba-Aguilar and Mungu ıa-Steyer 2013, Metcalf and Graham 2018 and in the young and senescent compared to prime-aged individuals (Hayward et al 2011, Abolins et al 2018, Benton et al 2018. Physiological and behavioral differences are expected to be major drivers of the skewed appearance of many diseases (Guerra-Silveira and Abad-Franch 2013).…”

“…Differential investment in and development of parts of the immune system can create age-and sex-specific patterns of infection. A common pattern among mammals is higher infection levels in males compared to females (Schalk and Forbes 1997, C ordoba-Aguilar and Mungu ıa-Steyer 2013, Metcalf and Graham 2018 and in the young and senescent compared to prime-aged individuals (Hayward et al 2011, Abolins et al 2018, Benton et al 2018. However, there are many exceptions to these main demographic infection patterns (Vicente et al 2007, Smyth and Drea 2016, Sparks et al 2018.…”