Summary Immune defence has recently been viewed as a life‐history trait that shows trade‐offs with other life‐history traits. However, studies exploring correlations between different components of immune defence and other life‐history traits are scarce. In this study, two measures of immune function, body size, and development time were studied in the Mediterranean Field Cricket, Gryllus bimaculatus. We found no differences between the sexes, but differences in the correlation between the measure of immune function, development time, and body size. In both sexes, encapsulation rate was negatively correlated with body size and development time, whereas lytic enzyme activity was positively correlated with these two traits. Furthermore, encapsulation rate and lytic activity were themselves negatively correlated. These results indicate that there is no single trait that can be termed ‘immunocompetence’ and that an understanding of trade‐offs between the different types of immune function and life‐history traits will require a more detailed analysis of the physiological basis of the traits.
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Rantala et al. (2005) studied this question.
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