ArticleDie Naturwissenschaften2007
Sex, age, spleen size, and kidney fat of red deer relative to infection intensities of the lungworm Elaphostrongylus cervi.
Article in Die Naturwissenschaften, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 57 citations in OpenAlex.
- Gastrointestinal parasites of red and roe deer investigated via metagenomics and histology.Parasites & vectors · 2026Article
- Plastic sex-trait modulation by differential gene expression according to social environment in male red deer.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- Host-Parasite Relationship-Nematode Communities in Populations of Small Mammals.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Detection ofInternational journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2021Article
- Anuran's habitat use drives the functional diversity of nematode parasite communities.Parasitology research · 2021Article
- Long-Term Determinants of Tuberculosis in the Ungulate Host Community of Doñana National Park.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- The Influence of Age on the Activity of Selected Biochemical Parameters of the Mouflon (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2019Article
- Assessment of parasite virulence in a natural population of a planktonic crustacean.BMC ecology · 2019Article
- Sex and season explain spleen weight variation in the Egyptian mongoose.Current zoology · 2019Article
- Seasonality of helminth infection in wild red deer varies between individuals and between parasite taxa.Parasitology · 2018Article
- Ecology of the interaction between Ixodes loricatus (Acari: Ixodidae) and Akodon azarae (Rodentia: Criceridae).Parasitology research · 2015Article
- Fighting a losing battle: vigorous immune response countered by pathogen suppression of host defenses in the chytridiomycosis-susceptible frog Atelopus zeteki.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2014Article
- Effects of parasitism and morphology on squirrelpox virus seroprevalence in grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis).PloS one · 2014Article
- Sex-biased differences in the effects of host individual, host population and environmental traits driving tick parasitism in red deer.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2013Article
- Is there sex-biased resistance and tolerance in Mediterranean wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus) populations facing multiple helminth infections?Oecologia · 2012Article
- Deviance partitioning of host factors affecting parasitization in the European brown hare (Lepus europaeus).Die Naturwissenschaften · 2009Article
- What does testosterone do for red deer males?Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2009Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We analyzed the relationships among spleen size, body condition (measured as kidney fat), and larval counts of the nematode Elaphostrongylus cervi in red deer (Cervus elaphus). The aim was to investigate the interaction between host body condition and intensity of infection with parasites. As red deer are highly polygynous, we also tested whether these relationships varied with sex and age of the hosts. Kidney fat and spleen size were positively correlated in subadults (2-3 years old) and adults (>3 years old), but not in calves (<1 year old) or yearlings (1-2 years old). Spleen size was negatively associated with nematode load in subadult females and in adult males. These two age classes are potentially the most nutritionally stressed, as subadult hinds are still growing and often engaging in rearing their first calf, and adult stags were sampled just after the rut, which is recognized as a substantial energy drain in this age-sex class, as they compete to hold females during the mating season. Body condition related negatively to parasite count only in adult males. In the context of red deer life history, these findings suggest that spleen size is dependent on body condition and that it could be affected by variation in resource partitioning among immune defense, growth, and reproductive effort in red deer. For the first time in a wild mammal, the spleen mass is shown to be positively related to body condition and negatively related to parasite infection. We conclude that elucidating whether spleen mass reflects immune defense investment or a measure of general body condition should contribute to understanding topical issues in mammal ecology.
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