ArticleNature communications2018
Schedule and magnitude of reproductive investment under immune trade-offs explains sex differences in immunity.
Article in Nature communications, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Sex-Specific Screening Mitigates Basal Metabolic Dimorphism Bias and Reveals DIV1 Survival-Associated Metabolic Signatures inBiomolecules · 2026Article
- Female reproductive status and ecological conditions impact the magnitude of sex differences in human immune status across the lifespan.Research square · 2026Article
- Sex differences in antibody responses to influenza A/H3N2 across the life course.Research square · 2025Article
- Phylogenetic Relationships of Immune Function and Oxidative Physiology With Sexual Selection and Parental Effort in Male and Female Birds.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Article
- Is there a sicker sex? Dose relationships modify male-female differences in infection prevalence.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Article
- Survival at older ages: are greater influenza antibody titers protective?Medical hypotheses · 2023Article
- Mouse Models forPathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Polygenic plague resistance in the great gerbil uncovered by population sequencing.PNAS nexus · 2022Article
- On maternity and the stronger immune response in women.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Variations in immune parameters with age in a wild rodent population and links with survival.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Drosophila melanogaster hosts coevolving with Pseudomonas entomophila pathogen show sex-specific patterns of local adaptation.BMC ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Sexual dimorphism in immune function and oxidative physiology across birds: The role of sexual selection.Ecology letters · 2022Article
- Longitudinal dynamics of co-infecting gastrointestinal parasites in a wild sheep population.Parasitology · 2022Article
- The evolution of powerful yet perilous immune systems.Trends in immunology · 2022Review
- Optimal immune specificity at the intersection of host life history and parasite epidemiology.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Experimental evolution reveals sex-specific dominance for surviving bacterial infection in laboratory populations ofEvolution letters · 2021Article
- Immune activation affects whole-organism performance in male but not female green anole lizards (Anolis carolinensis).Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Sex differences in immunity are found in many species. Known immune mechanisms in birds and mammals suggest that pathogen detection may be amplified in females, whereas in males, pathogen killing is amplified. We show that these immunological profiles emerge as distinct peaks on a fitness landscape defined by sensitivity-specificity and infection-immunopathology immune tradeoffs. What selection pressures might drive males and females towards separate peaks? Surprisingly, modeling immune trade-offs alone results in a pattern of sex differences that is the reverse of what is observed. By integrating these trade-offs into a life-history framework, where the schedule and magnitude of reproductive investment differs between the sexes, we find that increased age-specific infection and mortality risks during parental investment can push females towards the peak that aligns with empirical observations. Overall, our model suggests enhanced pathogen detection (in females) versus enhanced pathogen killing (in males) is best explained if shared immune tradeoffs interact with sex-specific reproductive schedules and risks. We suggest ways to test this framework empirically.
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