A newly evolved Drosophila Cytorace-9 shows trade-off between longevity and immune response

Species with an efficient immune system would be at an advantage to evade pathogenic challenges and adapt to an ever changing ecological niche. The upkeep of immunity is a costly affair, thus trade-offs between immunity and other life history traits are expected. However, studies on the relation between immunity and life span have yielded paradoxical results. Drosophila Cytoraces, being at different stages of evolutionary divergence, provide an excellent experimental model system to study how evolving populations gain novel traits in the absence of selection. We found that in the absence of pathogenic infections, the Cytorace-9 flies lived longer than those of Cytorace-3. However, when these Cytoraces were challenged with different pathogenic microbes, the trend was opposite. After infection with pathogens, the long-lived Cytorace-9 survived worse than the short lived Cytorace-3, which can be attributed to a reduction in its immune response. This study provides evidence to support the existence of a trade-off between life span and immunity.