Wound healing in the wild: stress, sociality and energetic costs affect wound healing in natural populations.

Ecoimmunologists strive to understand how ecology and evolution shape immunity in natural populations. To date, ecoimmunologists have sometimes struggled to find measures of immunity that can be easily performed in nonmodel systems. One exception is variation in rates of cutaneous wound healing, which is a functionally important, integrative measure of immunity that combines cell-mediated, inflammatory and even some Th2-mediated processes. Here I review what is known about sources of variation in wound healing in wild populations, focusing on two key ecoimmunological questions: How and when does the stress response influence immune function? And how do energetic trade-offs alter immunity? The results indicate that stress and energetic costs can suppress wound healing, but the effects depend on individuals' social and abiotic environments. I also discuss methods to measure wound healing in natural populations and useful directions for future research. Because wound healing has functional significance to organisms, can be measured in diverse species and integrates several immune processes, this measure of immunity is an especially valuable member of the ecoimmunological toolkit.

Genetic identification of five strongyle nematode parasites in wild african elephants (Loxodonta africana).

African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) are an ecologically and economically important species in many African habitats. However, despite the importance of elephants, research on their parasites is limited, especially in wild populations. Currently, we lack genetic tools to identify elephant parasites. We present genetic markers from ribosomal DNA (rDNA) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to identify five elephant-specific nematode parasites in the family Strongylidae: Murshidia linstowi, Murshidia longicaudata, Murshidia africana, Quilonia africana, and Khalilia sameera. We collected adult nematodes from feces deposited by wild elephants living in Amboseli National Park, Kenya. Using both morphologic and genetic techniques, we found that the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region in rDNA provides a reliable marker to distinguish these species of strongyles. We found no evidence for cryptic genetic species within these morphologic species according to the cox-1 region of mtDNA. Levels of genetic diversity in strongyles from elephants were consistent with the genetic diversity seen within other strongyle species. We anticipate that these results will be a useful tool for identifying gastrointestinal nematode parasites in elephants.