SynthesisPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2015
Social status, immune response and parasitism in males: a meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 98 citations in OpenAlex.
- Social status and parasitism in male and female vertebrates: a meta-analysis.Scientific reports · 2018Pooled it
- Spotlighting zoonotic strongyloidiasis: a semi-systematic review of threadworms within baboons highlights opportunities for human infections.Infectious diseases of poverty · 2026Review
- Nonspecific constitutive immunity is negatively associated with basal metabolic rate at early phase of territorial competition in males of great tit.Current zoology · 2026Article
- Interacting effects of sex and age on immune responses in a polygynous bat with male-biased mortality.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Amazonian Shuar testosterone levels are related to parasite infection: immunocompetence handicap hypothesis implications.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2026Article
- Article
- Trade-offs between sociality and gastrointestinal parasite infection in the context of a natural disaster.Animal behaviour · 2024Article
- Measuring dominance certainty and assessing its impact on individual and societal health in a nonhuman primate model: a network approach.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Agonism and grooming behaviour explain social status effects on physiology and gene regulation in rhesus macaques.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Linking parasitism to network centrality and the impact of sampling bias in its interpretation.PeerJ · 2022Article
- Sociality predicts individual variation in the immunity of free-ranging rhesus macaques.Physiology & behavior · 2021Article
- Reproductive females and young mouflon (Parasitology · 2021Article
- Predictors of helminth parasite infection in female chacma baboons (International journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2021Article
- Aggression, glucocorticoids, and the chronic costs of status competition for wild male chimpanzees.Hormones and behavior · 2021Article
- Sociality and parasite transmission.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2021Review
- Social Network Predicts Exposure to Respiratory Infection in a Wild Chimpanzee Group.EcoHealth · 2020Article
- A comparison of dominance rank metrics reveals multiple competitive landscapes in an animal society.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Juvenile rank acquisition is associated with fitness independent of adult rank.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Sex differences in the impact of social status on hair cortisol concentrations in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta).American journal of primatology · 2020Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In male vertebrates, two conflicting paradigms--the energetic costs of high dominance rank and the chronic stress of low rank--have been proposed to explain patterns of immune function and parasitism. To date, neither paradigm has provided a complete explanation for status-related differences in male health. Here, we applied meta-analyses to test for correlations between male social status, immune responses and parasitism. We used an ecoimmunological framework, which proposes that males should re-allocate investment in different immune components depending on the costs of dominance or subordination. Spanning 297 analyses, from 77 studies on several vertebrate taxa, we found that most immune responses were similar between subordinate and dominant males, and neither dominant nor subordinate males consistently invested in predictable immune components. However, subordinate males displayed significantly lower delayed-type hypersensitivity and higher levels of some inflammatory cytokines than dominant males, while dominant males exhibited relatively lower immunoglobulin responses than subordinate males. Despite few differences in immunity, dominant males exhibited consistently higher parasitism than subordinate males, including protozoan blood parasites, ectoparasites and gastrointestinal helminths. We discuss our results in the context of the costs of dominance and subordination and advocate future work that measures both parasitism and immune responses in wild systems.
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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.