Cornet S. auteur aut IRD Brouat Carine auteur aut IRD Diagne C. auteur aut IRD Charbonnel N. auteur aut IRD text journalArticle eng text/pdf reformatted digital access Immunity is at the core of major theories related to invasion biology. Among them, the evolution of increased competitive ability (EICA) and EICA-refined hypotheses have been used as a reference work. They postulate that the release from pathogens often experienced during invasion should favour a reallocation of resources from (costly) immune defences to beneficial life-history traits associated with invasive potential. We review studies documenting immune changes during animal invasions. We describe the designs and approaches that have been applied and discuss some reasons that prevent drawing generalized conclusions regarding EICA hypotheses. We detail why a better assessment of invasion history and immune costs, including immunopathologies and parasite communities, could improve our understanding of the relationships between immunity and invasion success. Finally, we propose new perspectives to revisit the EICA hypotheses. We first emphasize the neutral and adaptive mechanisms involved in immune changes, as well as timing of the later. Such investigation will help decipher whether immune changes are a consequence of pre-adaptation, or the result of postintroduction adaptations to invasion front conditions. We next bring attention to new avenues of research that remain unexplored, namely age-dependent immunity and gut microbiota, potential key factors underlying adaptation to invasion front environment and modulating invasion success. specialized competitive ability costly immune defences expansion range host-parasite coevolution inflammation invasive species 020 082 9 8 952-962 2016 1752-4571 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010068155 10.1111/eva.12406 1752-4571 [F B010068155] https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010068155 https://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/2021-06/010068155.pdf IRD - Base Horizon / Pleins textes 2016-11-03 2021-06-16 fdi:010068155 fre