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Climate, body condition and spleen size in birds

  • Global Change Ecology
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Abstract

Climatic conditions may impact on the body condition of animals and thereby affect their survival prospects. However, climate may also impact directly on the survival prospects of animals by affecting the size of immune defence organs that are used for defence against parasites. We used a large long-term database on body condition and size of the spleen in birds to test for immediate and delayed relationships between climatic conditions as indexed by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and body condition and spleen mass, respectively. Across 14 species of birds, spleen mass was significantly positively correlated with the NAO index, while the delayed effect of NAO on spleen mass was not significant. Spleen mass was positively related to body condition, but body condition did not depend significantly on NAO or delayed NAO effects. Bird species with a strong positive effect of NAO on spleen mass tended to have small spleens for their body size, while species with a strong negative effect of NAO on spleen mass tended to have relatively large spleens. Since bird species with relatively large spleen have been shown to suffer more from the negative effects of parasites, we can infer that the effects of climate as indexed by NAO on the size of the spleen depends on the importance of parasite-mediated natural selection.

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Acknowledgement

This study benefited from comments and discussion by N. Saino

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Parasitologie Evolutive, CNRS UMR 7103, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Bât. A, 7ème étage, 7 quai St. Bernard, Case 237, 75252 Paris Cedex 5, France

    Anders Pape Møller

  2. Taps Old Rectory, 6040 Christiansfeld, Denmark

    Johannes Erritzøe

Authors
  1. Anders Pape Møller
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  2. Johannes Erritzøe
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Correspondence to Anders Pape Møller.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 3 shows summary statistics of spleen and body mass and associated correlations

Table 3. Summary statistics for spleen mass (g), body mass (g), correlation between body condition and spleen mass, correlation coefficient between spleen mass and NAO index, and correlation coefficient between body condition and NAO index
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Møller, A.P., Erritzøe, J. Climate, body condition and spleen size in birds. Oecologia 137, 621–626 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-003-1378-1

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