Vogelweith, Fanny Dr.

Dr. Fanny Vogelweith
PostDoc

Curriculim Vitae

2015 - present Humboldt postdoctoral fellow, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany.
2014-2015 Postdoc position, INRA, Villenave d’Ornon, France
2010-2013 PhD Thesis in Ecology, University of Burgundy, Dijon, France. “Host plant effect on immunity of pests: influence of grapevine on ability of European grapevine moth to defend against bio-aggressors.
2009-2010 2nd year of Master, University of Burgundy, Dijon, France.
2009-2010 1st year of Master, University of Burgundy, Dijon, France.
2005-2008 Bachelor Degree, University Henri Poincaré, Nancy, France.

Forschungsinteressen

Postdoctoral project

Understanding why some animals live in families, whereas others prefer solitary life is a central question in evolutionary biology. Family life is a widespread phenomenon in nature, which is characterized by frequent and intimate behavioral interactions between parents and offspring and by the expression of parental care. The ecological success of species with family life is commonly attributed to the important benefits parental care provides to offspring in the forms of defense against predators and food provisioning. However, family life also comes with fitness costs to parents and offspring due to its inherent substantial risk of pathogen infection. Getting a better understanding of the emergence and persistence of family life therefore requires shedding light on the mechanisms that help family members to limit the risk of pathogen infection.

One strategy to prophylactically or curatively fight against pathogen infection is to mount personal immune responses. Personal immunity is a well-known process involving both physiological and behavioral defenses, such as enzymatic reactions to isolate and kill invading pathogens in the hemolymph, or the collection and/or consumption of specific organic compounds to clear an infection or to reduce its symptoms via self-medication. However, personal immunity is costly, so that individuals need to optimize their investment into personal immunity e.g. to the risk of infection, to their own quality and/or to investment into other life-history traits. A second strategy to fight against pathogen infection is to mount collective immune defense, a phenomenon that is unique to group-living animals and defined as any type of immune response that has been selected to increase the fitness of the challenged individual and one or more recipients. Over the last decade, collective immunity has been mostly studied in species with permanent and derived social life (e.g. ants and honeybees), in which its forms range from nest site selection, over allo-grooming, to the removal of corpse from the colony.

Although each family member could in principle invest into personal and collective immunity to fight against pathogen infection, the potential trade-offs driving their co-expression and their respective (or joined) importance in the early evolution of family life are poorly known. In particular, it remains unclear whether personal and collective immunity are jointly, antagonistically or independently expressed in species with temporary and facultative family life, the characteristics that likely prevailed in the early evolution of social life. In general, addressing this issue will provide key insights on the entangled evolutionary pathways traditionally thought to drive social and pathogen evolutions, as well as on the role of social environment in the evolution of immune systems.

My research project aims at better understanding the importance of mother-offspring interactions (and thus scope for collective immunity) on the investment into personal immunity of each family member in an insect with facultative family life: the European earwig Forficula auricularia. To this end, I propose experiments designed to disentangle the influences of (i) mother-offspring interactions on maternal investment into physiological components of personal immunity, (ii) maternal care on offspring investment into physiological components of personal immunity and finally of (iii) mother-offspring interactions on maternal investment into self-medication, a behavioural trait of personal immunity.

Please found more informations (PhD project…) on my website: http://fanny-vogelweith.com/

Publikationen

An up-to-date list of publications can be found on http://fanny-vogelweith.com/scientific-communications/

(13) Vogelweith F, Thiéry D, Moret Y, Delbac L & Moreau J 2017. No evidence of an immune adjustment in response to a parasitoid threat in Lobesia botrana larvae. Journal of Insect Physiology, 102: 7-11.

(12) Körner M*, Vogelweith F*, Foitzik S, Meunier J. 2017. Condition-dependent trade-off between weapon size and immunity in males of the European Earwig. Scientific Reports, 7: 7988. (*authors contributed equally)

(11) Vogelweith F, Thiery D. 2017. Cover crop differentially affects arthropods, but not diseases occurring on grape leaves in vineyards. Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research, 23: 426-431.

(10) Vogelweith F*, Körner M*, Foitzik S und Meunier J. 2017. Age, pathogen exposure, but not maternal care shape offspring immunity in an insect with facultative family life. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 17: 69. (*authors contributed equally)

(9) Vogelweith, F., Moret, Y., Monceau, K., Thiéry, D., & Moreau, J. 2016. The relative abundance of hemocyte types in a polyphagous moth larva depends on diet. Journal of Insect Physiology, 88, 33-39.

(8) Vogelweith, F., Moreau, J, Thiéry, D. & Moret, Y. 2015. Food-mediated modulation of immunity in a phytophagous insect: An effect of nutrition rather than parasitic contamination. Journal of Insect Physiology, 77, 55-61.

(7) Muller, K., Vogelweith, F., Thiéry, D., Moret, Y. & Moreau, J. 2015. Immune benefits from alternative host plants could maintain polyphagy in a phytophagous insect. Oecologia, 177, 467-475.

(6) Vogelweith, F., Thiéry, D., Moret, Y., Colin, E., Motreuil, S. & Moreau, J. 2014. Defense strategies used by two sympatric vineyard moth pests. Journal of Insect Physiology, 64, 54-61.

(5) Vogelweith, F., Dourneau, M., Thiéry, D., Moret, Y. & Moreau, J. 2013. Geographical variation in parasite prevalence shapes larval immunocompetence in the phytophagous European grapevine moth larvae. Naturwissenschaften, 100, 1149-1161.

(4) Vogelweith, F., Moret, Y., Thiéry, D. & Moreau, J. 2013. Lobesia botrana larvae develop faster in the presence of parasitoids. Plos One, 8(8), e72568.

(3) Vogelweith, F., Thiéry, D., Moret, Y. & Moreau, J. 2013. Immunocompetence increases with larval growth in a phytophagous moth. Physiological Entomology, 38, 212-225.

(2) Vogelweith, F., Thiéry, D., Moret, Y. & Moreau, J. 2013. Should Grape moth larval immunity help explaining resistance against natural enemies? Integrated Protection and Production in Viticulture, IOBC-WPRS Bulletin, 85, 157-164.

(1) Vogelweith, F., Thiéry, D., Quaglietti, B., Moret, Y. & Moreau, J. 2011. Host plant variation plastically impacts different traits of the immune system of a phytophagous insect. Functional Ecology, 25, 1241–1247.