Abstract
Life history trade-offs have been posited to shape wild animals' immune responses against microparasites (e.g., bacteria, viruses). However, coinfection with gut helminths may bias immune phenotypes away from inflammatory responses and could be another mechanism underlying variation in immune responses. We examined how the magnitude of a common and costly response to microparasites, the acute phase response (APR), varied with helminth coinfection at both the individual and the population levels in Song Sparrows ( Melospiza melodia). The APR includes fever and sickness behaviors, like lethargy and anorexia, and provides a whole-organism metric of immune activation. We combined data on fever and lethargy in response to an immune challenge (lipopolysaccharide) with postmortem data assessing helminth burdens and data on malarial parasite infection from blood samples in sparrows from two populations: southern California and western Washington, US. We predicted that birds with higher helminth burdens would express less severe APRs, at both the individual and population levels. Furthermore, we predicted that these reduced immune responses would diminish resistance against malarial parasites and would thus be associated with higher pre...Continue Reading
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