Environmental Stressors and Innate Immunity: Is there a correlation

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Environmental Stressors and Innate Immunity Is
there a correlation?

• Nora Egan Demers
• Florida Gulf Coast University

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How do organisms respond to environmental
stressors?

• Is innate immunity a good indicator to monitor
  ecosystem health?
• Are innate defense mechanisms suppressed in
  chronically stressed organisms (in vitro and in
  vivo assessment) from disturbed or polluted sites
  compared to pristine sites?

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Social hierarchy interactions
Handling
Habitat Degradation
STRESS
Pollution
Predator- Prey interactions
Crowding
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Habitat fragmentation

• Pine uplands
• Threatened by development
• home to many threatened and endangered species

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Gopher tortoise

• Species of special concern in Florida
• Keystone species (burrows home to numerous
  others)
• Mitigation parks to protect
• Long lived

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Commensals

• Burrows home to gt300 invertebrates
• vertebrates
• indigo snake
• gopher frog
• mice rats
• toads
• birds (wren, quail, owl)

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Gopherus polyphemus

• Many afflicted with URTD
• caused by Mycoplasma agassizii
• Disease incidence linked to stressors

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Assays to monitor innate immunity using
non-lethal blood samples

• cortisol concentrations
• catecholamine concentrations
• complete blood cell count
• plasma lysozyme activity
• alpha2-macroglobulin protease inhibitor activity

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Plasma proteins of interest

• C3
• CRP
• fibronectin fragments
• mannose binding protein
• Heat shock proteins
• antibody

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How to monitor innate immunity in ecosystems?

• Develop battery of assays (non-lethal samples)
  to monitor in other species
• Collaborate with field biologists, wildlife
  biologsts, conservation biologists, zoos,
  Audubon, etc. -collect blood samples from
  organisms in pristine and disturbed sites
• Realize importance of both acute and chronic
  stressors on responses

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What we can learn

• How do organisms immune systems respond to
  stressors?
• How do those responses influence survival?
• Can monitoring innate immune mechanisms serve as
  an early indicator for ecosystem health?
• Evolution of innate immunity in vertebrates

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