Description
Urbanization is a globally conspicuous landscape change that will likely accelerate in the future. This human-induced process imposes important ecological modifications on organisms inhabiting cities including changes in the diseases and parasites encountered. However, we still know very little on how urban environments impact their immune system. Previous studies offer contrasting results that are based on single immune parameters with no spatial replication. We investigated whether common blackbirds (Turdus merula) living in cities or in natural (forest) habitats show differences in their innate and adaptive immune system. We collected information from 10 blackbird populations paired two by two (urban vs forest) across a wide geographical area in Europe to allow generalization of our results. We found urban-associated increases in haptoglobin and haemagglutination, while other immune parameters (ovotransferrin, haemolysis, nitric oxide and white blood cells) did not show significant differences between urban and forest blackbirds. Despite the overall reduction in parasitic pressure (i.e. ecto and endoparasites) in urban habitats, our results show that some urban-associated immune changes (e.g.haemagglutination) are mediated by Plasmodium infection. Our findings suggest complex and multi-faceted immune changes associated with urbanization that cannot be simply explained by changes in parasitic load.| Periode | 12-feb.-2019 |
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| Evenementstitel | Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting 2019 |
| Evenementstype | Conference |
| Conferentienummer | 12 |
| Organisator | Netherlands Ecological Research Network (NERN) |
| Locatie | Lunteren, NetherlandsToon op kaart |
| Mate van erkenning | National |