ArticleJournal of experimental zoology. Part A, Ecological and integrative physiology2017
Costs of immune responses are related to host body size and lifespan.
Article in Journal of experimental zoology. Part A, Ecological and integrative physiology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Macroimmunology: The drivers and consequences of spatial patterns in wildlife immune defence.The Journal of animal ecology · 2020Pooled it
- Using host species traits to understand the consequences of resource provisioning for host-parasite interactions.The Journal of animal ecology · 2018Pooled it
- Resource reallocation under persistent immune activation drives trade-offs between life history and immunity in pirk-deficient Musca domestica.BMC biology · 2025Article
- Genomic insights into the mechanisms of body size evolution in Serpentes.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- The Promise of a Pointillist Perspective for Comparative Immunology.Physiology (Bethesda, Md.) · 2024Review
- A crucial nexus: PhylogeneticCurrent research in parasitology & vector-borne diseases · 2024Article
- Age-related response to mite parasitization and viral infection in the honey bee suggests a trade-off between growth and immunity.PloS one · 2023Article
- Complex life-cycles in trophically transmitted helminths: Do the benefits of increased growth and transmission outweigh generalism and complexity costs?Current research in parasitology & vector-borne diseases · 2022Review
- Experimental evidence that host choice by parasites is age-dependent in a fish-monogenean system.Parasitology research · 2022Article
- Comparative analysis of helminth infectivity: growth in intermediate hosts increases establishment rates in the next host.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Applied ecoimmunology: using immunological tools to improve conservation efforts in a changing world.Conservation physiology · 2021Article
- The impacts of body mass on immune cell concentrations in birds.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Resolving Peto's paradox: Modeling the potential effects of size-related metabolic changes, and of the evolution of immune policing and cancer suppression.Evolutionary applications · 2020Article
- Insights into the Evolution of Neoteny from the Genome of the Asian Icefish Protosalanx chinensis.iScience · 2020Article
- Urinary Cortisol Increases During a Respiratory Outbreak in Wild Chimpanzees.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2020Article
- Host tolerance and resistance to parasitic nest flies differs between two wild bird species.Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Longer life span is associated with elevated immune activity in a seasonally polyphenic butterfly.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2019Article
- Food for contagion: synthesis and future directions for studying host-parasite responses to resource shifts in anthropogenic environments.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
A central assumption in ecological immunology is that immune responses are costly, with costs manifesting directly (e.g., increases in metabolic rate and increased amino acid usage) or as tradeoffs with other life processes (e.g., reduced growth and reproductive success). Across taxa, host longevity, timing of maturity, and reproductive effort affect the organization of immune systems. It is reasonable, therefore, to expect that these and related factors should also affect immune activation costs. Specifically, species that spread their breeding efforts over a long lifetime should experience lower immune costs than those that mature and breed quickly and die comparatively early. Likewise, body mass should affect immune costs, as body size affects the extent to which hosts are exposed to parasites as well as how hosts can combat infections (via its effects on metabolic rates and other factors). Here, we used phylogenetic meta-regression to reveal that, in general, animals incur costs of immune activation, but small species that are relatively long-lived incur the largest costs. These patterns probably arise because of the relative need for defense when infection risk is comparatively high and fitness can only be realized over a comparatively long period. However, given the diversity of species considered here and the overall modest effects of body mass and life history on immune costs, much more research is necessary before generalizations are appropriate.
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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.