| Literature DB >> 26168031 |
Isabella Capellini1, Charles L Nunn2, Robert A Barton3.
Abstract
Placental invasiveness-the number of maternal tissue layers separating fetal tissues from maternal blood-is variable across mammalian species. Although this diversity is likely to be functionally important, variation in placental invasiveness remains unexplained. Here we test the hypothesis that increased risk of transplacental transmission of pathogens from the mother to the fetus promotes the evolution of non-invasive placentation, the most likely derived condition in eutherian mammals. Specifically, we predict that non-invasive placentation is associated with increased microparasite species richness relative to more invasive placental types, based on the assumption that higher numbers of microparasites in a population reflects greater risk of transplacental transmission to fetuses. As predicted, higher bacteria species richness is associated with non-invasive placentation. Protozoa species richness, however, shows the opposite pattern. Because invasive placentae facilitate the transfer of maternal antibodies to the fetus, we propose that the ancestral condition of invasive placentation is retained under selection for protection of newborns from higher risk of postnatal protozoan infection. Hence, our findings suggest that a tradeoff exists between protection against bacterial infection prenatally and protozoan infection postnatally. Future studies are needed to investigate how maternal prevalence of infection and the relative pre- versus postnatal risk of fetal infection by different microparasite groups vary among mammalian hosts in relation to placental invasiveness.Entities:
Mesh:
Year: 2015 PMID: 26168031 PMCID: PMC4500545 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0132563
Source DB: PubMed Journal: PLoS One ISSN: 1932-6203 Impact factor: 3.240
Correlated evolution of species richness between the different microparasite groups.
| Microparasite | Protozoa | Bacteria | Virus | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Predictors | t132 | p | t132 | p | t133 | p |
| Citation count | -1.5 | 0.144 | -2.5 | 0.015 | 3.2 | 0.002 |
| (Citation count)2 | 2.3 | 0.026 | 2.8 | 0.005 | - | - |
| Bacteria | 2.4 | 0.016 | - | - | 6.2 | <0.001 |
| Virus | 3.1 | 0.002 | 6.4 | <0.001 | - | - |
| Protozoa | - | - | 2.6 | 0.010 | 2.8 | 0.006 |
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| ||||||
| Lh | -1.1 | -11.1 | -18.6 | |||
| ML λ | 0.36 | 0.47 | 0.47 | |||
| R2 | 0.47 | 0.55 | 0.56 | |||
Fig 1Placental invasiveness and microparasite species richness.
Placental invasiveness and (a) Bacteria and (b) protozoa species richness, after accounting for citation count and species richness of the other microparasite groups (epi = epitheliochorial; endo = endotheliochorial, hemo = hemochorial).
Full models of microparasite species richness and placentation while controlling for other microparasite groups.
| Microparasite | Bacteria | Protozoa | Virus | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Predictors | t129 | p | t130 | p | t131 | p |
| Citation count | -2.1 | 0.036 | -1.2 | 0.227 | 3.1 | 0.002 |
| (Citation count)2 | 2.7 | 0.008 | 2.0 | 0.048 | - | - |
| Bacteria | - | - | 2.5 | 0.013 | 6.1 | <0.001 |
| Virus | 5.5 | <0.001 | 3.0 | 0.003 | - | - |
| Protozoa | 2.6 | 0.010 | - | - | 2.7 | 0.007 |
| Endotheliochorial | -2.2 | 0.028 | 0.2 | 0.866 | 0.6 | 0.528 |
| Hemochorial | -5.6 | <0.001 | 8.0 | <0.001 | 0.1 | 0.882 |
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| ||||||
| Epitheliochorial | 5.6 | <0.001 | -8.0 | <0.001 | -0.1 | 0.882 |
| Endotheliochorial | 2.8 | 0.005 | -6.7 | <0.001 | 0.4 | 0.673 |
|
| ||||||
| Lh | -9.8 | 5.1 | -18.4 | |||
| ML λ | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.47 | |||
| R2 | 0.59 | 0.58 | 0.56 | |||
Placentation is dummy coded (following [8], see Methods). Epitheliochorial placentation is used as the reference level; in post-hoc testing hemochorial placentation is set as the reference level. Results for bacteria species richness are reported for the analysis without Galagoides demidoff that is an outlier (see Results); results with G. demidoff are reported in Table B in S1 File. For each predictor in a model we report the t-value with degrees of freedom (tdf) and p-value; for each model we report the model log-likelihood (Lh), the estimated value of the phylogenetic signal in the model residuals as quantified by λ (ML λ), and the amount of variance in microparasite species richness explained by the model (R2).