B.N. Hangalapura, MSc: Cold stress and immunity: Do chickens adapt to cold by trading-off immunity for thermoregulation?

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1 Mar 2006 16:00
Unit: Wageningen UR
Location: Aula, building 362, Gen. Foulkesweg 1, Wageningen
Organisation: Wageningen University
Promotor: dr.ir. B. Kemp (Adaptation Physiology)
Co Promotor: Dr.ir. H.K. Parmentier en Dr.ir. H. van den Brand

 Maintaining adequate immune function can be quite a challenge for birds during winter. The cold season demands extra energy for thermoregulation while food supply is often reduced. Such times, it is believed that the environmental stress may suppress energy-demanding immune responses and increase the risk of disease. But which parts of the immune system are energetically expensive? Is there a trade-off between different arms of the immune system? And do growth, thermoregulation and immune function all draw from the same resources?

These questions are interesting not only for physiological ecologists, but also for chicken farmers as they shift towards farming systems that resemble more natural conditions. In contrast, physiological ecologists can also learn how birds deal with several simultaneous environmental stressors from research into the ways chickens cope.

In this project, we investigated how cold and nutritional stressors affect the immune system, how resources are allocated to thermoregulation, growth and various components of the immune system and also which physiological process (e.g. growth, immune function, thermoregulation) has the highest priority in chickens.

Overall, the findings suggest that 1. cold stress is good for innate immune function and it does not harm the capacity of chickens to produce antibodies against pathogens, 2. thermoregulation and immune functions have high priority than the growth, 3. thermoregulation and growth draw on the same energy resource, and 4. in contrast to expectations, no clear trade-off existed between immune function and thermoregulation.
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