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Environmental Stressors and Innate Immunity: Is there a correlation?

2000. Environmental Stressors and Innate Immunity: Is there a correlation?. Nora Egan Demers Florida Gulf Coast University. 2000. How do organisms respond to environmental stressors?. Is innate immunity a good indicator to monitor ecosystem health?

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Environmental Stressors and Innate Immunity: Is there a correlation?

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  1. 2000 Environmental Stressors and Innate Immunity: Is there a correlation? Nora Egan Demers Florida Gulf Coast University

  2. 2000 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?

  3. 2000 Social hierarchy interactions Handling Habitat Degradation STRESS Pollution Predator- Prey interactions Crowding

  4. Habitat fragmentation • Pine uplands • Threatened by development • home to many threatened and endangered species

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

  6. Commensals • Burrows home to >300 invertebrates • vertebrates: • indigo snake • gopher frog • mice & rats • toads • birds (wren, quail, owl)

  7. Gopherus polyphemus • Many afflicted with URTD • caused by Mycoplasma agassizii • Disease incidence linked to stressors

  8. 2000 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

  9. 2000 Plasma proteins of interest • C3 • CRP • fibronectin fragments • mannose binding protein • Heat shock proteins • antibody

  10. 2000 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

  11. 2000 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

  12. 2000

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