ArticleOecologia2016
Negative impact of urban habitat on immunity in the great tit Parus major.
Article in Oecologia, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 47 citations in OpenAlex.
- The impact of urbanization on health depends on the health metric, life stage and level of urbanization: a global meta-analysis on avian species.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Pooled it
- Disentangling Environmental and Within-Host Drivers of Parasite Dynamics in Natural Populations.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Spatial Characterization of Trace Metal Concentrations and Biomarkers of Exposure in Feral Pigeons (Columba livia) from a Highly Industrialized Metropolis in Mexico.Biological trace element research · 2026Article
- Context-Dependent Effects of Amino Acid Supplementation on Nestling Growth and Baseline Innate Immune Function.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Urbanization enhances body condition, but not innate immune defences, in a common waterbird.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Haemosporidian intensity and nestlings' life-history along an urban-to-rural gradient.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Feather corticosterone reveals that urban great tits experience lower corticosterone exposure than forest individuals during dominance-rank establishment.Conservation physiology · 2023Article
- Age-dependent relationships among diet, body condition, and Echinococcus multilocularis infection in urban coyotes.PloS one · 2023Article
- Innate immune function and antioxidant capacity of nestlings of an African raptor covary with the level of urbanisation around breeding territories.The Journal of animal ecology · 2023Article
- Double-brooding and annual breeding success of great tits in urban and forest habitats.Current zoology · 2022Article
- Population density mediates induced immune response, but not physiological condition in a well-adapted urban bird.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Feather, But Not Plasma, Glucocorticoid Response to Artificial Light at Night Differs between Urban and Forest Blue Tit Nestlings.Integrative and comparative biology · 2021Article
- Reduced ectoparasite load, body mass and blood haemolysis in Eurasian kestrels (Falco tinnunculus) along an urban-rural gradient.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2021Article
- Bird-feeder cleaning lowers disease severity in rural but not urban birds.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Exposure to artificial light at night alters innate immune response in wild great tit nestlings.The Journal of experimental biology · 2021Article
- Urbanization is associated with modifications in DNA methylation in a small passerine bird.Evolutionary applications · 2021Article
- Diet contributes to urban-induced alterations in gut microbiota: experimental evidence from a wild passerine.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Effects of the Urban Environment on Oxidative Stress in Early Life: Insights from a Cross-fostering Experiment.Integrative and comparative biology · 2018Article
- Selective disappearance of great tits with short telomeres in urban areas.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Urban health and ecology: the promise of an avian biomonitoring tool.Current zoology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Urban habitats are described as having an overall negative influence on many fitness-related traits in several bird species, but a vital function such as immunity remains poorly studied. The immune response is strongly linked to individual condition, which partly depends on resource availability and the parasitic context that often differ between urban and natural habitats. A difference between the immunity of populations dwelling in urban areas and populations from more natural habitats can, therefore, be hypothesized. We conducted a 2-year experimental study on great tits (Parus major) in urban and forest areas. We stimulated the constitutive immunity of nestlings and assessed both the inflammatory response by measuring the plasma levels of haptoglobin, an inflammatory marker, and its activation cost through the loss of body mass. In addition, we checked the nestlings for ectoparasites and assessed haemosporidian prevalence in adults. Nestlings from urban sites produced relatively less haptoglobin and lost more body mass than those from forest sites, which suggests that the activation of constitutive immunity is more costly for birds living in urban sites than for those living in the forest. We detected no ectoparasite in birds in both habitats. However, urban adults showed lower haemosporidian prevalence than forest ones, suggesting a reduced exposure to these parasites and their vectors in towns. Overall, our study provides evidence for an immune difference between urban and forest populations. Because immunity is crucial for organism fitness, it is of prime interest to identify causes and processes at the origin of this difference.
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