Year: 2015
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Both the ability to gain a high dominance status and having an efficient immune defence are favourable qualities that typically increase fitness in social and host-parasite interactions. Individuals with a high dominance status are predicted to gain fitness-related benefits from prior access to limited, defensible resources, such as food and matings. Immune defence mechanisms, on the other hand, have evolved to minimize the fitness costs of parasitic infections. The relative significance of a high dominance status and strong immune defence for individual fitness is, however, affected by the quality of the environment. The aim of this thesis is to improve the understanding of environmentally determined variation in dominance status, immune defence and their consequences for individual fitness. I use the native noble crayfish (Astacus astacus), the invasive signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) and the highly virulent, invasive Aphanomyces astaci, the causative agent of the crayfish plague, as my study models. I first experimentally test theoretical predictions on how major ecological factors, including food availability, predation risk and population density, influence behavioural decision-making in fight contests, especially with regard to the maintenance of dominance hierarchies between size-matched crayfish. Using natural noble crayfish subpopulations with different crayfish plague history, I then explore whether variation in immune defence and crayfish plague resistance is potentially explained by local adaptation to the disease, or alternatively by geographical divergence. By keeping noble crayfish experimentally under constant environmental conditions, I finally determine whether seasonal variation in immune defence is endogenously regulated. My results show that individuals that had achieved dominant status in non-resource fight contests have an advantage in monopolising a limited, defendable food resource in a future contest. Furthermore, I find evidence that as population density increases, the division of the resource between dominants and subdominants becomes more unequal. Generally, my results suggest that due to ecological factors the dominance status of individuals can be more dynamic than theory predicts, especially when the contestants have similar fighting ability. For example, in line with the asset-protection principle, individuals having achieved dominant status in a non-predation risk contest increase their submissive behaviours in the presence of a predation threat, giving subdominants the opportunity to win a larger percentage of bouts in the predation risk contest. My results also reveal evidence for geographical variation in resistance to the crayfish plague and immune defence that is, however, independent of historical disease outbreaks in the study subpopulations. Furthermore, for the first time in invertebrates, my results demonstrate reproduction-related endogenous seasonal variation in the immune defence of noble crayfish. Overall, my results suggest that ecological factors, such as population density, predation risk and disease history, have to be taken in to account to better understand the causes and consequences of dominance status and immune defence in any individual species.
Source: Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja
Author: Gruber, Christina
Institution: University of Helsinki
Language: English
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2176164785