Aging in personal and social immunity: do immune traits senesce at the same rate?

ABSTRACT: How much should an individual invest in immunity as it grows older? Immunity is costly and its value is likely to change across an organism's lifespan. A limited number of studies have focused on how personal immune investment changes with age in insects, but we do not know how social immunity, immune responses that protect kin, changes across lifespan, or how resources are divided between these two arms of the immune response. In this study, both personal and social immune functions are considered in the burying beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides. We show that personal immune function declines (phenoloxidase levels) or is maintained (defensin expression) across lifespan in nonbreeding beetles but is maintained (phenoloxidase levels) or even upregulated (defensin expression) in breeding indi

SUBMITTER: Reavey CE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4667822 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature