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Reduced cellular immune response in social insect lineages
Margarita M López-Uribe1, Warren B Sconiers2, Steven D Frank2
1Department of Entomology, North Carolina State University Department of Applied Ecology, North Carolina State University W. M. Keck Center for Behavioral Biology, Natural History Museum of Denmark mmlopezu@ncsu.edu.
Biology Letters
|March 11, 2016
Summary
Social insects may have weaker individual immune systems due to reliance on group behaviors for disease prevention. Larger colony size correlates with reduced cellular immune response in social insects, suggesting behavioral defenses are prioritized.
Area of Science:
- Evolutionary biology
- Immunology
- Insect behavior
Background:
- Social living in insects presents challenges for individual fitness due to increased disease transmission risk.
- Social insects are abundant and diverse, making their evolutionary adaptations to sociality a key research area.
- Two hypotheses, the social group hypothesis and the relaxed selection hypothesis, propose contrasting effects of sociality on immune systems.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test the social group hypothesis versus the relaxed selection hypothesis regarding the impact of sociality on insect immune systems.
- To investigate the relationship between sociality, colony size, body size, and cellular immune response in insects.
- To determine if social insects rely more on behavioral or immunological defenses against disease transmission.
Main Methods:
- Measuring the encapsulation response, a key indicator of cellular immunity, in 11 eusocial and non-eusocial insect lineages.
- Utilizing phylogenetic mixed linear models, including Markov chain Monte Carlo generalized linear mixed models (mcmcGLMM) and phylogenetic generalized least squares (PGLS).
- Analyzing the effects of behavior, colony size, and body size on the cellular immune response.
Main Results:
- A significantly negative effect of colony size on encapsulation response was observed (mcmcGLMM p < 0.05; PGLS p < 0.05).
- This suggests that larger colony size is associated with a reduced cellular immune response.
- No specific mention of behavioral effects or body size effects on immune response in the provided text.
Conclusions:
- Insects living in large societies may prioritize behavioral immune defenses, such as hygienic behaviors, over robust individual immune function.
- This finding supports the relaxed selection hypothesis in the context of social insects.
- Sociality may drive a shift towards collective or behavioral disease mitigation strategies rather than enhanced individual immunity.
