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Context-dependent costs and benefits of tuberculosis resistance traits in a wild mammalian host.

Authors :
Tavalire HF
Beechler BR
Buss PE
Gorsich EE
Hoal EG
le Roex N
Spaan JM
Spaan RS
van Helden PD
Ezenwa VO
Jolles AE
Source :
Ecology and evolution [Ecol Evol] 2018 Dec 06; Vol. 8 (24), pp. 12712-12726. Date of Electronic Publication: 2018 Dec 06 (Print Publication: 2018).
Publication Year :
2018

Abstract

Disease acts as a powerful driver of evolution in natural host populations, yet individuals in a population often vary in their susceptibility to infection. Energetic trade-offs between immune and reproductive investment lead to the evolution of distinct life history strategies, driven by the relative fitness costs and benefits of resisting infection. However, examples quantifying the cost of resistance outside of the laboratory are rare. Here, we observe two distinct forms of resistance to bovine tuberculosis (bTB), an important zoonotic pathogen, in a free-ranging African buffalo ( Syncerus caffer ) population. We characterize these phenotypes as "infection resistance," in which hosts delay or prevent infection, and "proliferation resistance," in which the host limits the spread of lesions caused by the pathogen after infection has occurred. We found weak evidence that infection resistance to bTB may be heritable in this buffalo population ( h <superscript>2</superscript>  = 0.10) and comes at the cost of reduced body condition and marginally reduced survival once infected, but also associates with an overall higher reproductive rate. Infection-resistant animals thus appear to follow a "fast" pace-of-life syndrome, in that they reproduce more quickly but die upon infection. In contrast, proliferation resistance had no apparent costs and was associated with measures of positive host health-such as having a higher body condition and reproductive rate. This study quantifies striking phenotypic variation in pathogen resistance and provides evidence for a link between life history variation and a disease resistance trait in a wild mammalian host population.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
2045-7758
Volume :
8
Issue :
24
Database :
MEDLINE
Journal :
Ecology and evolution
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
30619576
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4699