Malaria parasites, immune challenge, MHC variability, and predator avoidance in a passerine bird
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. Several hypotheses predict a relationship between parasite burden and risk-taking behavior, but the underlying causal mechanisms are poorly understood due to the scarcity of exper...
| Autores: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión aceptada para publicación |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2015 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) |
| Repositorio: | DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:digital.csic.es:10261/124480 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/124480 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Boldness Flight initiation distance Immunogenetics Parasite mediated selection Selection Phenotypic correlation Temperament |
| Sumario: | Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. Several hypotheses predict a relationship between parasite burden and risk-taking behavior, but the underlying causal mechanisms are poorly understood due to the scarcity of experimental studies and the neglected focus on immune defense. Here, in 3 sets of field studies on the collared flycatcher, Ficedula albicollis, we investigated how among-male variation in flight initiation distance (FID, the distance at which an individual flee a potential predator) is linked to among-male variation in health status. First, we correlatively assessed the relationship between FID and the prevalence of haemosporidian blood parasites. We found no difference in risk-taking behavior between parasitized and nonparasitized individuals rejecting a hypothesis that predicts that malaria infection status affects the costs of predator avoidance. Second, we performed an immune challenge experiment, in which randomly chosen birds were injected with a novel antigen (sheep red blood cell) and their change in FID was compared with birds that received a placebo treatment. This experiment revealed no evidence for the immunological treatment affecting risk-taking behavior, thus we failed to obtain support for the hypothesis that posits that immediate health status mediates decisions about when to flee a predator. Finally, we detected a negative relationship between the number of alleles of the major histocompatibility complex and FID. This result, in concordance with the above negative results, supports the >avoidance> hypothesis that states that only individuals with efficient immune defense machinery are able to bear the costs of risk-taking that can emerge through the increased infection rates of risk-taker individuals. |
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