| 1. |
- Bensch, Hanna M., et al.
(författare)
-
Living with relatives offsets the harm caused by pathogens in natural populations
- 2021
-
Ingår i: eLife. - 2050-084X. ; 10
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Living with relatives can be highly beneficial, enhancing reproduction and survival. High relatedness can, however, increase susceptibility to pathogens. Here, we examine whether the benefits of living with relatives offset the harm caused by pathogens, and if this depends on whether species typically live with kin. Using comparative meta-analysis of plants, animals, and a bacterium (nspecies = 56), we show that high within-group relatedness increases mortality when pathogens are present. In contrast, mortality decreased with relatedness when pathogens were rare, particularly in species that live with kin. Furthermore, across groups variation in mortality was lower when relatedness was high, but abundances of pathogens were more variable. The effects of within-group relatedness were only evident when pathogens were experimentally manipulated, suggesting that the harm caused by pathogens is masked by the benefits of living with relatives in nature. These results highlight the importance of kin selection for understanding disease spread in natural populations.
|
|
| 2. |
- Holmes, Emily A., et al.
(författare)
-
Multidisciplinary research priorities for the COVID-19 pandemic : a call for action for mental health science
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Lancet psychiatry. - 2215-0374 .- 2215-0366. ; 7:6, s. 547-560
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is having a profound effect on all aspects of society, including mental health and physical health. We explore the psychological, social, and neuroscientific effects of COVID-19 and set out the immediate priorities and longer-term strategies for mental health science research. These priorities were informed by surveys of the public and an expert panel convened by the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the mental health research charity, MQ: Transforming Mental Health, in the first weeks of the pandemic in the UK in March, 2020. We urge UK research funding agencies to work with researchers, people with lived experience, and others to establish a high level coordination group to ensure that these research priorities are addressed, and to allow new ones to be identified over time. The need to maintain high-quality research standards is imperative. International collaboration and a global perspective will be beneficial. An immediate priority is collecting high-quality data on the mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic across the whole population and vulnerable groups, and on brain function, cognition, and mental health of patients with COVID-19. There is an urgent need for research to address how mental health consequences for vulnerable groups can be mitigated under pandemic conditions, and on the impact of repeated media consumption and health messaging around COVID-19. Discovery, evaluation, and refinement of mechanistically driven interventions to address the psychological, social, and neuroscientific aspects of the pandemic are required. Rising to this challenge will require integration across disciplines and sectors, and should be done together with people with lived experience. New funding will be required to meet these priorities, and it can be efficiently leveraged by the UK's world-leading infrastructure. This Position Paper provides a strategy that may be both adapted for, and integrated with, research efforts in other countries.
|
|
| 3. |
- Hotopf, Matthew, et al.
(författare)
-
The scope of mental health research during the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath
- 2020
-
Ingår i: British Journal of Psychiatry. - : CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS. - 0007-1250 .- 1472-1465. ; 217:4, s. 540-542
-
Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on population mental health are unknown. We need to understand the scale of any such impact in different sections of the population, who is most affected and how best to mitigate, prevent and treat any excess morbidity. We propose a coordinated and interdisciplinary mental health science response.
|
|
| 4. |
- O'Connor, Emily A., et al.
(författare)
-
Wetter climates select for higher immune gene diversity in resident, but not migratory, songbirds
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Royal Society of London. Proceedings B. Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 1471-2954. ; 287:1919
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Pathogen communities can vary substantially between geographical regions due to different environmental conditions. However, little is known about how host immune systems respond to environmental variation across macro-ecological and evolutionary scales. Here, we select 37 species of songbird that inhabit diverse environments, including African and Palaearctic residents and Afro-Palaearctic migrants, to address how climate and habitat have influenced the evolution of key immune genes, the major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I). Resident species living in wetter regions, especially in Africa, had higher MHC-I diversity than species living in drier regions, irrespective of the habitats they occupy. By contrast, no relationship was found between MHC-I diversity and precipitation in migrants. Our results suggest that the immune system of birds has evolved greater pathogen recognition in wetter tropical regions. Furthermore, evolving transcontinental migration appears to have enabled species to escape wet, pathogen-rich areas at key periods of the year, relaxing selection for diversity in immune genes and potentially reducing immune system costs.
|
|
| 5. |
|
|
| 6. |
- Vinkler, Michal, et al.
(författare)
-
Understanding the evolution of immune genes in jawed vertebrates
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Journal of Evolutionary Biology. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 1010-061X .- 1420-9101. ; 36:6, s. 847-873
-
Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Driven by co-evolution with pathogens, host immunity continuously adapts to optimize defence against pathogens within a given environment. Recent advances in genetics, genomics and transcriptomics have enabled a more detailed investigation into how immunogenetic variation shapes the diversity of immune responses seen across domestic and wild animal species. However, a deeper understanding of the diverse molecular mechanisms that shape immunity within and among species is still needed to gain insight into-and generate evolutionary hypotheses on-the ultimate drivers of immunological differences. Here, we discuss current advances in our understanding of molecular evolution underpinning jawed vertebrate immunity. First, we introduce the immunome concept, a framework for characterizing genes involved in immune defence from a comparative perspective, then we outline how immune genes of interest can be identified. Second, we focus on how different selection modes are observed acting across groups of immune genes and propose hypotheses to explain these differences. We then provide an overview of the approaches used so far to study the evolutionary heterogeneity of immune genes on macro and microevolutionary scales. Finally, we discuss some of the current evidence as to how specific pathogens affect the evolution of different groups of immune genes. This review results from the collective discussion on the current key challenges in evolutionary immunology conducted at the ESEB 2021 Online Satellite Symposium: Molecular evolution of the vertebrate immune system, from the lab to natural populations.
|
|
