Understanding immune function as a pace of life trait requires environmental context

Colony pace: a life-history trait affecting social insect epidemiology.

Among colonies of social insects, the worker turnover rate (colony 'pace') typically shows considerable variation. This has epidemiological consequences for parasites, because in 'fast-paced' colonies, with short-lived workers, the time of parasite residence in a given host will be reduced, and further transmission may thus get less likely. Here, we test this idea and ask whether pace is a life...

Membrane Research in a Global Context Requires Collaboration, not Competition!

Immune defense and reproductive pace of life in Peromyscus mice.

Immune activity is variable within and among vertebrates despite the potentially large fitness costs of pathogens to their hosts. From the perspective of life history theory, immunological variability may be the consequence of counterbalancing investments in immune defense against other expensive physiological processes, namely, reproduction. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that ...

membrane research in a global context requires collaboration, not competition!

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Understanding life as chemistry.

Although my investigations have taken several paths, my very earliest research was in clinical chemistry. As a medical student in 1938, I became aware that my bilirubin-we called it icteric index then-was elevated. I then determined the blood chemistries of many other students and found a few of them with elevated bilirubin serum concentrations and a defective clearance of injected bilirubin. I...