Wetter climates select for higher immune gene diversity in resident, but not migratory, songbirds.

Results (a) The evolution of major histocompatibility complex class I in resident species occupying different environmental niches There was a highly significant relationship between precipitation and MHC-I diversity in resident species, measured as the mean number of different MHC-I alleles per individual ( figure 2 , PM = 0.0156, CI = 0.0065–0.0227, pMCMC < 0.001; electronic supplementary material, table S5): species living in regions with the highest monthly precipitation had up to eight times more MHC-I alleles than species living in the driest regions.

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We did, however, observe a marginal trend for species with larger ranges to have individuals with more MHC-I alleles (PM = 0.0001, CI = 0.0000 to 0.0003, pMCMC = 0.07; electronic supplementary material, figure S6 and table S7), but this may be due to species with larger ranges encountering more pathogens [ 55 ].

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