Classical, or mainstream, immunology works hard to control variation to bring methodological and conceptual unity to the field of ecoimmunology.
Basic Example
The immune system can be regarded as diary of exposition to viruses. Migration of animals lead to different exposure to animals as virus hosts. Combination of migration routes where individuals might be exposed to virus hosts can be used to cross-validate anti-gens and anti-bodies detected in the immune system of e.g. in migratory animals. For some viral infections you can detect in an early phase of the infection antibodies of the Immunglobulin class M and later in the infection the detection of antibodies of the Immunglobulin class G recommended. This basic example shows, how the integration of different approaches:
spatial history and ecological history of virus exposition together with the local requirements and constraints to which the animals where exposed and
One of the field’s seminal papers, by Folstad and Karter, was a response to Hamilton and Zuk’s famous paper on the handicap hypothesis for sexually selected traits. Folstad and Karter proposed the immunocompetence handicap hypothesis, whereby testosterone acts as a mediator of immunosuppression and thus keeps sexually-selected traits honest. Although there is only moderate observational or experimental evidence supporting this claim up until now, the paper itself was one of the first links to be made suggesting a cost to immunity requiring trade-offs between it and other physiological processes. In 1996, a foundational paper for the field invoked trade-offs, the allocation of limited resources among competing, costly physiological functions, as a prime cause of variation in immunity. Evidence for these putative trade-offs has often proven to be elusive More recently, ecoimmunology has been the theme of three special issues in peer-reviewed journals, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, in Functional Ecology, and in Physiological and Biochemical Zoology.
