Data from: The effects of body mass on immune cell concentrations of mammals

• Main Authors: Downs, Cynthia J., Dochtermann, Ned A., Ball, Ray, Klasing, Kirk C., Martin, Lynn B.
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Macropus robustus; Nanger granti; Eulemur macaco; Odocoileus hemionus; Panthera onca; Oreotragus oreotragus; Cephalophus silvicultor; Rousettus aegyptiacus; Axis porcinus; Helarctos malayanus; Trichechus manatus; Budorcas taxicolor; Neofelis nebulosa; Varecia variegata; Phoca vitulina; Martes pennanti; Nasua nasua; Canis latrans; Ursus thibetanus; Hylobates lar; Dendrolagus matschiei; Phacochoerus africanus; Perodicticus potto; Eulemur coronatus; Potos flavus; Bassariscus sumichrasti; Aonyx cinerea; Canis mesomelas; Gazella dorcas; Connochaetes taurinus; Pteropus rodricensis; Rucervus eldii; Chinchilla lanigera; Petrogale xanthopus; Crocuta crocuta; Melursus ursinus; Saguinus midas; Helogale parvula; Boselaphus tragocamelus; Cephalophus rufilatus; Bubalus depressicornis; Vulpes velox; Dicerorhinus sumatrensis; Callosciurus prevostii; Cephalophus niger; Choloepus hoffmanni; Lagenorhynchus obliquidens; Pedetes capensis; Immunity: ecology; Pecari tajacu
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/4068901; https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q4n4884

Theory predicts that body mass should affect the way organisms evolve and use immune defenses. We investigated the relationship between body mass and blood neutrophil and lymphocyte concentrations among 250+ terrestrial mammalian species. We tested whether existing theories (e.g., Protecton Theory, immune system complexity, and rate of metabolism) accurately predicted the scaling of immune cell concentrations. We also evaluated the predictive power of body mass for these leukocyte concentrations compared to sociality, diet, life history, and phylogenetic relatedness. Phylogeny explained >65% of variation in both lymphocytes and neutrophils, and body mass appeared more informative than other interspecific trait variation. In the best-fit mass-only model, neutrophils scaled hypermetrically (b = 0.11) with body mass whereas lymphocytes scaled isometrically. Extrapolating to total cell numbers, this exponent means that an African elephant circulates 13.3 million times the neutrophils of a house mouse, whereas their masses differ by only 250k-fold. We hypothesize that such high neutrophil numbers might offset the i) higher overall parasite exposure that large animals face and/or ii) the higher relative replication capacities of pathogens to host cells. Life history and ecological data for mammalsLife history and ecological data for mammals used in "The effects of body mass on immune cell concentrations of terrestrial mammals." Data include body mass (log-transformed), maximal longevity (log-transformed), maximal reproductive potential (log-transformed), trophic level, and sociality.DownsEtAl_AmNat_ScalingNL_DataDryad.csvR code for statistics used in "The effects of body mass on immune cell concentrations of mammals"R code for statistics used in The effects of body mass on immune cell concentrations of mammals by Downs et al.DownsEtAl_AmNat_ScalingNL_ScalingCode_dryad.rFunding provided by: National Science FoundationCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001Award Number: IOS-0947177, ...