30
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Evolutionary ecology of insect immune defenses.

      1
      Annual review of entomology
      Annual Reviews

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPubMed
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Evolutionary ecology seeks to understand the selective reasons for the design features of the immune defense, especially with respect to parasitism. The molecular processes thereby set limitations, such as the failure to recognize an antigen, response specificity, the cost of defense, and the risk of autoimmunity. Sex, resource availability, and interference by parasites also affect a response. In turn, the defense repertoire consists of different kinds of immune responses--constitutive or induced, general or specific--and involves memory and lasting protection. Because the situation often defies intuition, mathematical analysis is typically required to identify the costs and benefits of variation in design, but such studies are few. In all, insect immune defense is much more similar to that of vertebrates than previously thought. In addition, the field is now rapidly becoming revolutionized by molecular data and methods that allow unprecedented access to study evolution in action.

          Related collections

          Author and article information

          Journal
          Annu Rev Entomol
          Annual review of entomology
          Annual Reviews
          0066-4170
          0066-4170
          2005
          : 50
          Affiliations
          [1 ] Ecology and Evolution, ETH Zürich, ETH-Zentrum NW, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland. psh@env.ethz.ch
          Article
          10.1146/annurev.ento.50.071803.130420
          15471530
          32ff9696-bd4f-425d-999b-7502ae5a4610
          History

          Comments

          Comment on this article