Sex, pregnancy & immune defence

OLIVIA ROTH

Kiel Evolution Centre, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany

oroth@zoologie.uni-kiel.de

Link to online seminar: https://umontpellier-fr.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_IdZ3CE8YT7iZSgDTbnXSNg

Life-history strategies represent a unique driver of immune system evolution, resulting in substantial consequences for the protection from infectious disease. Sex-specific life histories selected for distinct immunological optima for males and females, while an intimate connection of mother and embryo during parental care coevolved with immunological adaptations. Intense parental care has established new vertical transfer routes of parental immunological experience and microbes, shaping offspring fitness. Understanding how life-history shapes immunity, permits to tackle the ultimate and proximate drivers for sexual dimorphism, sex roles, and sex-specific lifestyles
The unique evolution of male pregnancy in syngnathids (pipefishes, seahorses and sea dragons) represents a fascinating life-history strategy that permits to explore the evolution of genetic adaption and phenotypic plasticity in immunity. Syngnathids´ male pregnancy has coevolved with a genomic immune system rearrangement, challenging established textbook knowledge about the flexibility of vertebrate immune systems. Together with differential regulation of immune responses throughout pregnancy, the immunological tolerance of the embryos during male pregnancy is facilitated. With their multiple reversal of sex roles, we can explore sex vs. sex-role driven genomic and phenotypic plastic immunological differences. While sex determination seems flexible across species, immunological patterns usually associated with the female sex, are in this teleost family linked to the male sex, suggesting that sex roles and biological sex both contribute to sexual dimorphism. Syngnathids demonstrate sex and sex-role specific transfer of immunity and microbes from parents to offspring. We study trans-generational immune priming (TGIP) and microbial transmission in syngnathids to comprehend how these processes influence niche colonization, microbiome establishment, and the development of the adaptive immune system in offspring.
By utilizing syngnathids as a model, we gain a deeper understanding of immunity, reproduction, and evolutionary innovations. Their remarkable evolutionary and phenotypic flexibility of the immune system seems to have facilitated the evolution of their life-history strategy, and offers insights into how sex role drives immunological differentiation.

Publications:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.231620
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2023.2036
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mec.16333
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1916251117

Watch previous seminars on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrX4IsZ8WIFcDa0ZmC7rcQg