IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/beheco/v17y2006i1p20-24.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Age, parasites, and condition affect humoral immune response in tropical pythons

Author

Listed:
  • Beata Ujvari
  • Thomas Madsen

Abstract

Mounting an immune response has been suggested to be physiologically costly because of metabolic requirements of immune cells specifically and upregulation of the immune system in general. We investigated such costs in free-living water pythons (Liasis fuscus), immunized with a harmless antigen, keyhole limpet hemocyanin. In the present study, we analyze the independent effects of age, blood parasite load, and body condition on the ability to mount a humoral immune response (level of antibody production to novel antigens). Python humoral immune response decreased with increasing body length/age, decreased with increasing blood parasite load, and decreased with declining body condition. The results suggest an energetic trade-off between immunocompetence and other energetically costly processes. Copyright 2006.

Suggested Citation

  • Beata Ujvari & Thomas Madsen, 2006. "Age, parasites, and condition affect humoral immune response in tropical pythons," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 17(1), pages 20-24, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:17:y:2006:i:1:p:20-24
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/ari091
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:17:y:2006:i:1:p:20-24. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/beheco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.