“…Although it is widely understood that parental stress can negatively affect offspring (e.g., Meaney, Szyf, & Seckl, 2007;Robert, Vleck, & Bronikowski, 2009;Sheriff, Krebs, & Boonstra, 2009;Sheriff & Love, 2013) and that even brief handling or disturbance of parents (Bertin et al, 2008;Schreck, Contreras-Sanchez, & Fitzpatrick, 2001) or short-term exposure of unfertilized eggs to glucocorticoids (Sloman, 2010) can elicit these negative effects, whether investigator handling and manipulation of parents affect offspring in species that have modulated stress responses during breeding is largely untested. These species are frequently used in reproductive ecology research because their suppressed breeding-season responses to perceived threats, such as humans, permit close monitoring and manipulation of apparently natural reproductive behavior (e.g., garter snakes, wood frogs, Swierk, Graham, & Langkilde, 2014;sea turtles, Valverde, 1999 (Conant & Collins, 1998), have a time-constrained, highly synchronized breeding season of only a few days (2-6 days at our study sites). Wood frogs reproduce in vernal (temporary) pools soon after ice melts in early spring, and breeding is characterized by a male-biased sex ratio and scramble competition for females (Banta, 1914;Berven, 1981;Howard & Kluge, 1985).…”