Wetter climates select for higher immune gene diversity in resident, but not migratory, songbirds.

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

SUBMITTER: O'Connor EA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7015325 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature