Sexual activity increases resistance against Pseudomonas entomophila in male Drosophila melanogaster

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Abstract

Background

Maintenance and deployment cost of immunity is high, therefore, it is expected to trade-off with other high cost traits like sexual activity. Previous studies with Drosophila melanogaster show that male’s ability to clear bacteria decreases with increase in sexual activity. We subjected this idea to test using two pathogens ( Pseudomonas entomophila and Staphylococcus succinus) and three different populations of Drosophila melanogaster.

Results

We found that sexual activity enhanced male survivorship in a pathogen specific manner. Sexually active males show higher resistance than virgins upon infection with Pseudomonas entomophila. Interestingly, the beneficial effects of sexual activity increased with time of co-habitation with females and declined when access to females was restricted. We observed no change in male survivorship upon experimentally varying the number of sexual interactions.

Conclusion

Our results show that the sexual activity-immunity trade-off in males cannot be generalised. The trade-off is potentially mediated through complex interactions between the host, pathogen and the environment experienced by the host.

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Most cited references 18

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Ecological immunology: costly parasite defences and trade-offs in evolutionary ecology

Ben C. Sheldon, Simon Verhulst (1996)

In the face of continuous threats from parasites, hosts have evolved an elaborate series of preventative and controlling measures - the immune system - in order to reduce the fitness costs of parasitism. However, these measures do have associated costs. Viewing an individual's immune response to parasites as being subject to optimization in the face of other demands offers potential insights into mechanisms of life history trade-offs, sexual selection, parasite-mediated selection and population dynamics. We discuss some recent results that have been obtained by practitioners of this approach in natural and semi-natural populations, and suggest some ways in which this field may progress in the near future.

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Immune defense and host life history.

Marlene Zuk, Andrew Stoehr (2002)

Recent interest has focused on immune response in an evolutionary context, with particular attention to disease resistance as a life-history trait, subject to trade-offs against other traits such as reproductive effort. Immune defense has several characteristics that complicate this approach, however; for example, because of the risk of autoimmunity, optimal immune defense is not necessarily maximum immune defense. Two important types of cost associated with immunity in the context of life history are resource costs, those related to the allocation of essential but limited resources, such as energy or nutrients, and option costs, those paid not in the currency of resources but in functional or structural components of the organism. Resource and option costs are likely to apply to different aspects of resistance. Recent investigations into possible trade-offs between reproductive effort, particularly sexual displays, and immunity have suggested interesting functional links between the two. Although all organisms balance the costs of immune defense against the requirements of reproduction, this balance works out differently for males than it does for females, creating sex differences in immune response that in turn are related to ecological factors such as the mating system. We conclude that immune response is indeed costly and that future work would do well to include invertebrates, which have sometimes been neglected in studies of the ecology of immune defense.

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Drosophila host defense after oral infection by an entomopathogenic Pseudomonas species.

Jeril Degrouard, Nicolas Vodovar, Bruno Lemaitre … (2005)

Drosophila has been shown to be a valuable model for the investigation of host-pathogen interactions. Study of the Drosophila immune response has been hampered, however, by the lack of true Drosophila pathogens. In nearly all studies reported, the bacteria used were directly injected within the body cavity of the insect, bypassing the initial steps of a natural interaction. Here, we report the identification of a previously uncharacterized bacterial species, Pseudomonas entomophila (Pe), which has the capacity to induce the systemic expression of antimicrobial peptide genes in Drosophila after ingestion. In contrast to previously identified bacteria, Pe is highly pathogenic to both Drosophila larvae and adults, and its persistence in larvae leads to a massive destruction of gut cells. Using this strain, we have analyzed the modulation of the larval transcriptome upon bacterial infection. We found that natural infection by Pe induces a dramatic change in larval gene expression. In addition to immunity genes, our study identifies many genes associated with Pe pathogenesis that have been previously unreported.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Vanika Gupta

Zeeshan S Ali

Nagaraj G Prasad

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Evol Biol

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Evol. Biol

Title: BMC Evolutionary Biology

Publisher: BioMed Central

ISSN (Electronic): 1471-2148

Publication date Collection: 2013

Publication date (Electronic): 6 September 2013

Volume: 13

Page: 185

Affiliations

[1 ]Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali, India

Article

Publisher ID: 1471-2148-13-185

DOI: 10.1186/1471-2148-13-185

PMC ID: 3847581

PubMed ID: 24010544

SO-VID: bbfe8df1-afe2-4959-8780-1e84e0fad54e

License:

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Sexual activity increases resistance against Pseudomonas entomophila in male Drosophila melanogaster

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Abstract

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Fandom activity

Most cited references 18

Ecological immunology: costly parasite defences and trade-offs in evolutionary ecology

Immune defense and host life history.

Drosophila host defense after oral infection by an entomopathogenic Pseudomonas species.

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