Shifts in sex-specific immune gene expression in a beetle with parental
care: a possible association with sex roles
Abstract
Males and females generally differ in resource investment strategies to
maximise reproductive output, sometimes at the expense of important
systemic processes such as self-maintenance and immune activity. Here,
we used wild Lethrus apterus, a sexually dimorphic beetle with
parental care, to investigate the influence of sex roles (e.g.,
offspring provisioning) on their sex-specific immune gene expression
across a pseudo-longitudinal sampling framework. By determining immune
gene activation of males and females at five successive moments within
the active period, we showed that their sex-specific immune gene
expression varies substantially, alternating between male bias and
female bias across the active period. However, when pooling all sampling
dates together, there was no overall difference in the number of
up-regulated immune genes between the sexes. We discuss the potential
influence of sex roles on our results and highlight the importance of
sequential sampling schemes to understand ecological dynamics in the
wild.