Weathering the storm: parental effort and experimental manipulation of stress hormones predict brood survival

Ouyang, Jenny Q.; Lendvai, Ádám Z.; Dakin, Roslyn; Domalik, Alice D.; Fasanello, Vincent J.; Vassallo, Brian G.; Haussmann, Mark F.; Moore, Ignacio T.; Bonier, Frances

doi:10.1186/s12862-015-0497-8

Cited by 32 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…; Ouyang et al . ). One potentially fruitful avenue for investigating this topic is to evaluate how variation in cort is linked to nest abandonment (Love et al .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Success despite the stress: violet‐green swallows increase glucocorticoids and maintain reproductive output despite experimental increases in flight costs

et al. 2016

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Summary Glucocorticoid steroid hormones play a central role in regulating the metabolic state of animals, especially when they cope with unanticipated stressors in their environment. The cort‐adaptation hypothesis predicts that baseline concentrations of glucocorticoids are adjusted upward to match energetic needs and promote fitness when individuals are faced with physiological challenges, including those associated with reproduction. We tested the cort‐adaptation hypothesis in the violet‐green swallow (Tachycineta thalassina) by experimentally increasing flight costs during the offspring rearing period. Individual females were assigned to one of three treatments: light feather clipping (removal of four wing feathers), heavy feather clipping (removal of eight wing feathers) or a sham‐clip control. We measured baseline corticosterone and body mass immediately prior to implementing treatments during the offspring rearing period and then 10 days after initial manipulations took place. We also quantified risk‐taking behaviour, offspring feeding rate and the number of offspring fledged. Finally, we examined how treatments influenced offspring phenotype via measurements of nestling body mass and baseline corticosterone, as both measures have been associated with post‐fledging survival. We found that handicapped females significantly increased baseline corticosterone between the two sampling periods, with the magnitude of change in the light clipping and heavy clipping treatments 2·5× and 6·1× greater than controls, respectively. All individuals lost mass between the two sampling periods, but the degree of loss was greater for females in both clipping treatments relative to unmanipulated controls. In contrast, we found no evidence of treatment differences in female risk‐taking, offspring provisioning or in the number of offspring fledged. Offspring raised by females in both handicapped treatments did have significantly elevated baseline corticosterone relative to those in control broods, but we detected no treatment differences in offspring body mass. Our study found that handicapped females increased circulating glucocorticoids and were able to maintain critical parental care behaviours and raise a similar number of offspring as unmanipulated controls. Thus, increases in baseline cort of handicapped females appeared to have allowed them to maintain fitness despite increased physiological challenges, providing support for the cort‐adaptation hypothesis. A http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12719/suppinfo is available for this article.

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“…; Ouyang et al . ). One potentially fruitful avenue for investigating this topic is to evaluate how variation in cort is linked to nest abandonment (Love et al .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Success despite the stress: violet‐green swallows increase glucocorticoids and maintain reproductive output despite experimental increases in flight costs

et al. 2016

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“…Finally, correlations between hormones and fitness components, although not useful for estimating natural selection, can generate experimentally testable hypotheses regarding the functional role of endocrine plasticity in regulating traits that influence fitness (e.g. [53,54,89,104] Figure 5. An illustration of the reaction norm approach to estimate how selection shapes plasticity in endocrine traits.…”

Section: Moving Forward: Approaches To the Study Of Selection On Endomentioning

confidence: 99%

How can we estimate natural selection on endocrine traits? Lessons from evolutionary biology

Bonier¹,

Martin²

2016

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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An evolutionary perspective can enrich almost any endeavour in biology, providing a deeper understanding of the variation we see in nature. To this end, evolutionary endocrinologists seek to describe the fitness consequences of variation in endocrine traits. Much of the recent work in our field, however, follows a flawed approach to the study of how selection shapes endocrine traits. Briefly, this approach relies on among-individual correlations between endocrine phenotypes (often circulating hormone levels) and fitness metrics to estimate selection on those endocrine traits. Adaptive plasticity in both endocrine and fitness-related traits can drive these correlations, generating patterns that do not accurately reflect natural selection. We illustrate why this approach to studying selection on endocrine traits is problematic, referring to work from evolutionary biologists who, decades ago, described this problem as it relates to a variety of other plastic traits. We extend these arguments to evolutionary endocrinology, where the likelihood that this flaw generates bias in estimates of selection is unusually high due to the exceptional responsiveness of hormones to environmental conditions, and their function to induce adaptive life-history responses to environmental variation. We end with a review of productive approaches for investigating the fitness consequences of variation in endocrine traits that we expect will generate exciting advances in our understanding of endocrine system evolution.

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“…This indicates that nestling begging calls are not a straightforward signal of quality or need (Mock et al, 2011). Instead, these signals are weather-dependent signals of offspring state, and parents may need to integrate multiple dynamic cues to determine the appropriate response (Dawson et al, 2005;Ouyang et al, 2015). Our results therefore provide an example and mechanism for how context-dependent dynamics of begging signal function can occur (Bro-Jørgensen, 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Weather matters: begging calls are temperature- and size-dependent signals of offspring state

Dakin

Ouyang

Lendvai

et al. 2016

Behav

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Begging calls provide a way for parents to gauge offspring state. Although temperature is known to affect call production, previous studies have not examined the influence of ambient temperature at the nest. We recorded ambient temperature and begging calls of 3 day-old tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor). Our results indicate that typical daily temperature flux can dramatically alter a brood's begging calls, depending on body size. Broods with small (low body mass) nestlings decreased the rate and length of their calls at colder temperatures, consistent with a biophysical constraint. In contrast, broods with large (high body mass) nestlings increased the rate of their calls at colder temperatures. Parents responded in a context-dependent manner, returning more rapidly after smaller nestlings gave longer begging calls. Our results suggest that the function of offspring begging calls is highly dynamic, with environmental conditions altering the relationship between begging calls and offspring state.

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Weathering the storm: parental effort and experimental manipulation of stress hormones predict brood survival

Cited by 32 publications

References 45 publications

Success despite the stress: violet‐green swallows increase glucocorticoids and maintain reproductive output despite experimental increases in flight costs

Success despite the stress: violet‐green swallows increase glucocorticoids and maintain reproductive output despite experimental increases in flight costs

How can we estimate natural selection on endocrine traits? Lessons from evolutionary biology

Weather matters: begging calls are temperature- and size-dependent signals of offspring state

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