Exposure to artificial light at night alters innate immune response in wild great tit nestlings.

Mounting an immune response is associated with costs in terms of resources and energy ( Bonneaud et al., 2003 ), and most animals lose mass after an immune activation as a result of a mixture of increased metabolism and sickness behaviours ( Lochmiller and Deerenberg, 2000 ; Owen-Ashley and Wingfield, 2007 ).We found a marginally significant difference in mass loss between ALAN-exposed and dark-night nestlings during the immune challenge, with dark-night nestlings losing more mass during the acute-phase response than ALAN-exposed nestlings ( Fig. 4 ).

also in 26,082 other papers