Behavioral fever enhances T-cell responses in fish providing insights into the evolutionary integration of fever and adaptive immunity

• This short commentary discusses a recent publication by Yang et al. • Infected Nile tilapia display behavior-driven fever for pathogen clearance. • Behavior-driven fever mitigates T-cell apoptosis, preserving the T-cell pool. Recently, Yang et al . published a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing how in tilapia, behavioral fever helps optimizing antimicrobial immunity by alleviating T-cell apoptosis. The current manuscript is a short commentary on this landmark study.