Immune response is energetically costly in white cabbage butterfly pupae

Abstract

Parasite-driven coevolution has led hosts to develop a complicated and potentially costly defence machinery, consisting mainly of the immune system. Despite the evidence for the trade-offs between immune function and life-history traits, it is still obscure how the costs of using and maintaining the immune function are paid. We tested whether immune challenge is energetically costly for white cabbage butterfly (Pieris brassicae L.) diapausing pupa. Individuals challenged with nylon implant raised their standard metabolic rate nearly 8% compared to the controls. Hence, costs of activation of immune system in insect pupa can be expressed in energetic currency.

Infection dynamics of two renal myxozoans in hatchery reared fry and juvenile Atlantic cod Gadus morhua L.

“…The innate immune reactions as well as the adaptive responses have been shown to be energetically costly in a wide range of species from invertebrates, which rely exclusively on non-specific defence mechanisms, e.g. insects (Freitak et al 2003) to vertebrates, e.g. fish (Beamish et al 1996) or birds (Martin et al 2003).…”

Impact of Brown Ring Disease on the energy budget of the Manila clam Ruditapes philippinarum

“…In mammals (Lochmiller and Deerenberg, 2000) the metabolic costs of mounting an immune response range from about 10% up to 30% of the resting metabolic rate; in birds, an increase in basal metabolic activity of 9% has been measured, correlated with a 3% weight loss (Kerimov et al, 2001). Butterfly pupae raised their standard metabolic rate 8% when both humoral and cellular immune responses leading to melanization are induced (Freitak et al, 2003). Development of BRD may induce an energetically costly response of the clam's immune system in the context of the trade-off concept, coupled to finite energy inputs and reserves that must be allocated to a wide variety of competing biological functions.…”

“…(2) Lesions have been observed in the digestive gland and the mantle of highly infected clams (Paillard, 1992;Plana and Le Pennec, 1991;Plana, 1995;Paillard, 2004b); thus, an energy demand could be associated with cell repair functions and clearance of damaged tissues. However, such processes are difficult to assess, although there is evidence for their energetic cost (Freitak et al, 2003;Romanyukha et al, 2006). An energetic cost may also be associated with production of the symptomatic conchiolin deposit.…”

Increased extracellular adenosine in Drosophila that are deficient in adenosine deaminase activates a release of energy stores leading to wasting and death

“…The immune response is energetically costly (Derting and Compton, 2003;Freitak et al, 2003) and a progressive loss of energy stores -also called wasting -is observed during certain chronic infections in both flies and humans (Dionne et al, 2006;Lazzaro and Galac, 2006). In spite of a potentially high biomedical importance, the network of the molecular signals leading to wasting is largely unexplored.…”