Vitally important – does early innate immunity predict recruitment and adult innate immunity?

The immune system is one of the most important adaptations that has evolved to protect animals from a wide range of pathogens they encounter from early life onwards. During the early developmental period this is particularly true for the innate immunity, as other components of the immune system are, as yet, poorly developed. But innate immunity may not only be crucial for early life survival, but may also have long-lasting effects, for example if early life immunity reflects the functioning of the immune system as a whole. For this reason, we investigated the importance of four constitutive innate immune parameters (natural antibodies, complement activity, concentrations of haptoglobin, and concentrations of nitric oxide) for recruitment in free-living great tits. We compared nestling immunity of recruits with nestling immunity of their nonrecruited siblings. We also investigated within individual consistency of these innate immune parameters for those individuals that recruited, which ...

免疫系统是演化而来的关键适应性机制之一，可保护动物免受生命早期起便接触的各类病原体侵袭。在个体发育早期，先天性免疫（innate immunity）的作用尤为关键，因为此时免疫系统的其他组成部分尚未发育完全。然而，先天性免疫不仅对生命早期存活至关重要，还可能产生持久影响——例如，若生命早期的免疫状态能够反映整个免疫系统的整体功能。基于此，我们针对野化大山雀的种群招募过程，探究了四项组成型先天性免疫参数的重要性，包括天然抗体、补体活性、触珠蛋白（haptoglobin）浓度以及一氧化氮（nitric oxide）浓度。我们将成功招募个体的雏鸟免疫指标，与其未被招募的同胞雏鸟的免疫指标进行了对比。此外，我们还针对成功招募的个体，分析了这些先天性免疫参数的个体内一致性，而……