Meeting Abstract
Exposure to stressors within critical periods of development can have enduring effects on adult phenotype. In the context of disease dynamics, behavior is an important link between within-host resistance and among-host transmission because it can reduce demand on immunological processes and directly influence contact rates between healthy and infected individuals. For instance, many animals express sickness behaviors in response to infection, which are often considered adaptive strategies intended to promote host survival by reducing energy expenditure and conserving resources. Despite the significance of such behaviors, little is known about how early-life experiences contribute to variation in a host’s behavioral response to infection later in life. Here, we used zebra finches Poephila guttata to examine how early-life exposure to bacterial components that induce inflammatory responses (i.e. lipopolysaccharide, LPS) and/or stress hormones (i.e. corticosterone, CORT) affected sickness behaviors—specifically lethargy and anorexia—in adulthood. Because the early-life environment may act as a cue, potentially preparing an individual for the environment in which they will experience in adulthood, we predicted that individuals exposed to LPS early in life would have reduced expression of sickness behaviors, due to immunological priming, in comparison to individuals that did not receive LPS. Analyses are ongoing. This study is among the first to assess how variation in early-life experience contributes to variation in hosts’ behavioral response to infection later in life and highlights the potential implications of such individual-level heterogeneity on population-level processes (e.g. disease emergence and/or spread).
