Marine Biology Commons^™

Employing Individual Measures Of Baseline Glucocorticoids As Population-Level Conservation Biomarkers: Considering Within-Individual Variation In A Breeding Passerine, Christine L. Madliger, Oliver P. Love

Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research Publications

Labile physiological variables, such as stress hormones [i.e. glucocorticoids (GCs)], allow individuals to react to perturbations in their environment and may therefore reflect the effect of disturbances or positive conservation initiatives in advance of population-level demographic measures. Although the application of GCs as conservation biomarkers has been of extensive interest, few studies have explicitly investigated whether baseline GC concentrations respond to disturbances consistently across individuals. However, confirmation of consistent responses is of paramount importance to assessing the ease of use of GCs in natural systems and to making valid interpretations regarding population-level change (or lack of change) in GC concentrations. …