Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Clerc, Melanie
• Devevey, Godefroy
• Fenton, Andy
• Pedersen, Amy B.

Titel

Antibodies and coinfection drive variation in nematode burdens in wild mice

Ist Teil von

• International journal for parasitology, 2018-08, Vol.48 (9-10), p.785-792

Ort / Verlag

England: Elsevier Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Quelle

Access via ScienceDirect (Elsevier)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• [Display omitted] •General and specific antibodies are the main predictors of micro- and macroparasite infection and burden in the wild.•There is a positive relationship between Heligmosomoides polygyrus-specific IgG1 and worm burden.•There is a negative relationship between faecal IgA and H. polygyrus and Eimeria spp.•The presence of Eimeria spp. is associated with reduced antibody levels. Coinfections with parasitic helminths and microparasites are highly common in nature and can lead to complex within-host interactions between parasite species which can cause negative health outcomes for humans, and domestic and wild animals. Many of these negative health effects worsen with increasing parasite burdens. However, even though many studies have identified several key factors that determine worm burdens across various host systems, less is known about how the immune response interacts with these factors and what the consequences are for the outcome of within-host parasite interactions. We investigated two interacting gastrointestinal parasites of wild wood mice, Heligmosomoides polygyrus (nematode) and Eimeria spp. (coccidia), in order to investigate how host demographic factors, coinfection and the host’s immune response affected parasite burdens and infection probability, and to determine what factors predict parasite-specific and total antibody levels. We found that antibody levels were the only factors that significantly influenced variation in both H. polygyrus burden and infection probability, and Eimeria spp. infection probability. Total faecal IgA was negatively associated with H. polygyrus burden and Eimeria spp. infection, whereas H. polygyrus-specific IgG1 was positively associated with H. polygyrus infection. We further found that the presence of Eimeria spp. had a negative effect on both faecal IgA and H. polygyrus-specific IgG1. Our results show that even in the context of natural demographic and immunological variation amongst individuals, we were able to decipher a role for the host humoral immune response in shaping the within-host interaction between H. polygyrus and Eimeria spp.