WHY DO INSECTS EVOLVE IMMUNE PRIMING? A SEARCH FOR CROSSROADS

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dci.2021.104246. This is version 1 of this Preprint.

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Authors

Arun Prakash, imroze khan

Abstract

Until recently, it was assumed that insects lack immune memory since they do not have vertebrate-like specialized memory cells. Therefore, their most well studied evolutionary response against pathogens was increased basal immunity. However, growing evidence suggests that many insects also exhibit a form of immune memory (immune priming), where prior exposure to a low dose of infection confers protection against subsequent infection by the same pathogen that acts both within and across generations. Most strikingly, they can rapidly evolve as a highly parallel and mutually exclusive strategy from basal immunity, under different selective conditions and with divergent evolutionary trade-offs. However, the relative importance of priming as an optimal immune strategy also has contradictions, primarily because supporting mechanisms are still unclear. In this review, we adopt a comparative approach to highlight several emerging evolutionary, ecological and mechanistic features of priming vs basal immune responses that warrant immediate attention for future research.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32942/osf.io/5rc94

Subjects

Animal Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Education, Entomology, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences

Keywords

Coinfections, Cost of immunity, Immune priming, Resistance, Specificity, tolerance

Dates

Published: 2021-08-24 11:50

License

CC-By Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International