Today I came across a curious study from the current issue of Nature.  It is none too pithily titled “Inbred decorated crickets exhibit higher measures of macroparasitic immunity than outbred individuals” and, as the name suggests, it is about these delicate little critters:

The jerusalem cricket

The abstract informs us that:

Inbreeding is assumed to have negative effects on fitness, including the reduced ability to withstand immune challenges. We examined the immunological consequences of inbreeding in decorated crickets, Gryllodes sigillatus, by comparing lytic activity, phenoloxidase (PO) activity, and encapsulation ability of crickets from eight inbred lines with that of crickets from the outbred founder population. Surprisingly, crickets from inbred lines had a greater encapsulation ability compared with crickets from the outbred population. We suggest that because inbred crickets have reduced reproductive effort, they may, therefore, have the option of devoting more resources to this form of immunity than outbred individuals.

But that’s not very interesting.  Something like this would be more appropriate:

Endogamy in European populations is frequently implied by hostile ethnic actors to be a producer of inbreeding depression.  Such depression might be expected to include a reduced immunological response to hostile minorities seeking control of the population’s destiny.  We compared immunological response in eight highly inter-related, monoracial populations with that in multiracial populations where exogamy is high.  Not surprisingly, members of the monoracial populations displayed greater levels of tradition, self-awareness and ethnocentrism.  We suggest that these are the immunological conditions from which said hostile minorities, in misrepresenting endogamy to their hosts, seek to free themselves. 

Further, we suggest that endogamy and, therefore, relatedness should be the guiding principle of all European populations in which discussions rage over how to deal with minorities.