ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2010
The evolution of sex-specific immune defences.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Effects of immune challenge on expression of life-history and immune trait expression in sexually reproducing metazoans-a meta-analysis.BMC biology · 2020Pooled it
- Stranger swings: Temperature-dependent upsides and downsides of a densovirus in Aedes albopictus.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2026Article
- Non-additive transcriptional regulation underpins an additive survival trait in populations of Drosophila selected for increased post infection survival.BMC ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Host-specific effects of a generalist parasite of mosquitoes.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Effects of time spent in pregnancy or brooding on immunocompetence.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Is personality and its association with energetics sex-specific in yellow-necked miceEcology and evolution · 2023Article
- Pollinator sex matters in competition and coexistence of co-flowering plants.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- On maternity and the stronger immune response in women.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Functionally distinct T-helper cell phenotypes predict resistance to different types of parasites in a wild mammal.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Social effects on age-related and sex-specific immune cell profiles in a wild mammal.Biology letters · 2020Article
- Sex differences in life history, behavior, and physiology along a slow-fast continuum: a meta-analysis.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2018Review
- Evolution of sex-specific pace-of-life syndromes: genetic architecture and physiological mechanisms.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2018Review
- When sex makes you sick.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2015Article
- The effect of parasites on sex differences in selection.Heredity · 2015Article
- Article
- Sex differences in host defence interfere with parasite-mediated selection for outcrossing during host-parasite coevolution.Ecology letters · 2013Article
- Coevolving parasites and population size shape the evolution of mating behaviour.BMC evolutionary biology · 2013Article
- Exploring local immunological adaptation of two stickleback ecotypes by experimental infection and transcriptome-wide digital gene expression analysis.Molecular ecology · 2013Article
- Article
- Patterns in avian malaria at founder and source populations of an endemic New Zealand passerine.Parasitology research · 2012Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Why do males and females often differ in their ability to cope with infection? Beyond physiological mechanisms, it has recently been proposed that life-history theory could explain immune differences from an adaptive point of view in relation to sex-specific reproductive strategies. However, a point often overlooked is that the benefits of immunity, and possibly the costs, depend not only on the host genotype but also on the presence and the phenotype of pathogens. To address this issue we developed an adaptive dynamic model that includes host-pathogen population dynamics and host sexual reproduction. Our model predicts that, although different reproductive strategies, following Bateman's principle, are not enough to select for different levels of immunity, males and females respond differently to further changes in the characteristics of either sex. For example, if males are more exposed to infection than females (e.g. for behavioural reasons), it is possible to see them evolve lower immunocompetence than females. This and other counterintuitive results highlight the importance of ecological feedbacks in the evolution of immune defences. While this study focuses on sex-specific natural selection, it could easily be extended to include sexual selection and thus help to understand the interplay between the two processes.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.