TY  - JOUR
AU  - Angelier Frédéric, Wingfield John C.
PY  - 2010//
TI  - Hormonal correlates of individual quality in a long-lived bird: a test of the 'corticosterone-fitness hypothesis'.
JO  - Biology letters
SP  - 846 -9
VL  - 6
IS  - 6
KW  - Animals
KW  - Birds
KW  - Birds: blood
KW  - Birds: physiology
KW  - Breeding
KW  - Corticosterone
KW  - Corticosterone: blood
KW  - Female
KW  - Genetic Fitness
KW  - Male
KW  - Models
KW  - Biological
KW  - Reproduction
KW  - Reproduction: physiology
KW  - Seasons
KW  -
N2  - Measuring individual quality in vertebrates is difficult. Focusing on allostasis mechanisms may be useful because they are functionally involved in the ability of an individual to survive and reproduce in its environment. Thus, a rise in stress hormones levels (corticosterone) occurs when an organism has to cope with challenging environmental conditions. This has recently led to the proposal of the 'cort-fitness hypothesis', which suggests that elevated baseline corticosterone levels should be found in individuals of poor quality that have difficulty coping with their environment. We tested this hypothesis by comparing an integrative measure of individual quality to baseline corticosterone in black-browed albatrosses (Thalassarche melanophrys). We found that individual baseline corticosterone levels were related to individual quality and highly repeatable from one breeding season to the next. Importantly, this relationship was found in males, but not in females. Therefore, we suggest that the relationship between quality and baseline corticosterone levels may depend on the environmental and energetic constraints that individuals have to cope with.
SN  - 1644-7700
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2010.0376
N1  - exported from refbase (http://publi.ipev.fr/polar_references/show.php?record=445), last updated on Sat, 06 Jul 2024 10:21:32 +0200
ID  - AngelierFrederic2010
ER  -