Chronological age, biological age, and individual variation in the stress response in the European starling: a follow-up study

Gott, Annie; Andrews, Clare; Hormigos, Maria Larriva; Spencer, Karen A.; Bateson, Melissa; Nettle, Daniel

doi:10.7717/peerj.5842

Cited by 16 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Third, we investigated the direct effects of developmental treatments (the amount of food and the level of begging effort) on impulsivity in the current cohort of birds. Although the two previous starling studies (Bateson et al 2015; Nettle et al 2015a), in line with evidence from other systems (Lovic et al 2011; Brydges et al 2015), found no direct effects of developmental treatments on impulsivity, in the present cohort of starlings, there is other evidence for direct treatment effects on adult behavioural phenotype (Neville et al 2017; Gott et al 2018). This may be because the developmental treatments in the current birds, who were hand-reared, were better controlled than earlier cross-fostering manipulations.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Developmental history, energetic state and choice impulsivity in European starlings, Sturnus vulgaris

et al. 2019

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Impulsivity—the extent to which a reward is devalued by the amount of time until it is realized—can be affected by an individual’s current energetic state and long-term developmental history. In European starlings ( Sturnus vulgaris ), a previous study found that birds that were lighter for their skeletal size, and birds that had undergone greater shortening of erythrocyte telomeres over the course of development, were more impulsive as adults. Here, we studied the impulsivity of a separate cohort of 29 starlings hand-reared under different combinations of food amount and begging effort. The task involved repeated choice between a key yielding one pellet after 3 s and another key yielding two pellets after 8 s. Impulsivity was operationalised as the proportion of choices for the short-delay option. We found striking variation in impulsivity. We did not replicate the results of the previous study concerning developmental telomere attrition, though combining all the evidence to date in a meta-analysis did support that robustness of that association. We also found that early-life conditions and mass for skeletal size interacted in predicting impulsivity. Specifically, birds that had experienced the combination of high begging effort and low food amount were less impulsive than other groups, and the usual negative relationship between impulsivity and body mass was abolished in birds that had experienced high begging effort. We discuss methodological differences between our study and studies that measure impulsivity using an adjusting-delay procedure.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Developmental history, energetic state and choice impulsivity in European starlings, Sturnus vulgaris

et al. 2019

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“…In terms of biological stressors, factors such as animal handling, restraint, transportation and injury have all been shown to activate the HPA axis (Bosson, Palme & Boonstra 2013;Dehnhard et al 2001;Ganswindt et al 2010;Goymann et al 1999;Hämäläinen et al 2014). However, individual variation, in terms of the neuroendocrine response to the presence of a stressor, can vary considerably and should be taken into account when using a biological stressor for assay validation (see Gott et al 2018;Koolhaas et al 2010). The physiological validation is conducted through the artificial activation of the HPA axis; this is achieved by injecting an individual with synthetic adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) to increase GC production (ACTH challenge; Palme 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Validating a non-invasive technique for monitoring physiological stress in the samango monkey

Scheun

Tordiffe²,

Wimberger³

et al. 2020

Onderstepoort j. vet. res.

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The non-invasive monitoring of physiological stress can provide conservation and wildlife managers with an invaluable tool for assessing animal welfare and psychological health of captive and free-ranging populations. A significant decrease in free-ranging primate populations globally and an increase in captive-housed primates have led to a need to monitor the stress and general welfare of these animals. We examined the suitability of three enzyme immunoassays (EIAs) for monitoring stress-related physiological responses in the samango monkey, Cercopithecus albogularis erythrarchus. We conducted an adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) challenge on a male and female at the National Zoological Garden, Pretoria, South Africa. Individual faecal samples were collected 8 days pre- and post-ACTH administration and subsequently analysed for faecal glucocorticoid metabolite (fGCM) concentrations. During the study, biological stressors occurred for both the male and female. Two of the three EIAs tested (11-oxoetiocholanolone I and II) were able to reliably monitor fGCM alterations throughout the study period in both sexes. The 11-oxoetiocholanolone I EIA, however, had the lowest mean deviation from the calculated baseline value and was thus chosen as the preferred assay. Both the physiological activation of the stress response and the biological response to a stressor could be monitored with the chosen assay. The successful establishment of a reliable, non-invasive method for monitoring adrenocortical activity in C. albogularis erythrarchus will now allow conservationists, scientific researchers and wildlife managers to evaluate the level of stress experienced, and general welfare, by animals in captivity as well as free-ranging populations.

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“…CORT profiles were measured from the same 31 birds when they were aged 127–134 days (methods described in Gott et al 2018; the data used here are ‘age point 1’ from that study as this is the closest in age to the judgement bias experiment). Briefly, we used a standardised capture-handling-restraint protocol employed previously in European starlings (Andrews et al 2017).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The three judgement bias variables were correlated with each of baseline CORT, peak CORT and ΔCORT. Correlations involving peak CORT were partial, controlling for baseline CORT, and correlations involving ΔCORT were partial, controlling for CORT at 15 min (see Gott et al 2018). An alpha level of significance of P < 0.05 was used throughout.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the current cohort of birds, we did not manipulate CORT levels experimentally. However, we had measured individuals’ baseline CORT and CORT responses to an acute capture-handling-restraint stressor approximately 3 months prior to the present experiment (data previously published in Gott et al 2018). This allowed us to ask whether individual differences in judgement bias were related to individual differences in baseline CORT or the magnitude of the CORT response.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Developmental history and stress responsiveness are related to response inhibition, but not judgement bias, in a cohort of European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris)

et al. 2018

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Judgement bias tasks are designed to provide markers of affective states. A recent study of European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) demonstrated modest familial effects on judgement bias performance, and found that adverse early experience and developmental telomere attrition (an integrative marker of biological age) both affected judgement bias. Other research has shown that corticosterone levels affect judgement bias. Here, we investigated judgement bias using a modified Go/No Go task in a new cohort of starlings (n = 31) hand-reared under different early-life conditions. We also measured baseline corticosterone and the corticosterone response to acute stress in the same individuals. We found evidence for familial effects on judgement bias, of a similar magnitude to the previous study. We found no evidence that developmental treatments or developmental telomere attrition were related to judgement bias per se. We did, however, find that birds that experienced the most benign developmental conditions, and birds with the greatest developmental telomere attrition, were significantly faster to probe the learned unrewarded stimulus. We also found that the birds whose corticosterone levels were faster to return towards baseline after an acute stressor were slower to probe the learned unrewarded stimulus. Our results illustrate the potential complexities of relationships between early-life experience, stress and affectively mediated decision making. For judgement bias tasks, they demonstrate the importance of clearly distinguishing factors that affect patterns of responding to the learned stimuli (i.e. response inhibition in the case of the Go/No Go design) from factors that influence judgements under ambiguity.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s10071-018-1226-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Chronological age, biological age, and individual variation in the stress response in the European starling: a follow-up study

Cited by 16 publications

References 31 publications

Developmental history, energetic state and choice impulsivity in European starlings, Sturnus vulgaris

Developmental history, energetic state and choice impulsivity in European starlings, Sturnus vulgaris

Validating a non-invasive technique for monitoring physiological stress in the samango monkey

Developmental history and stress responsiveness are related to response inhibition, but not judgement bias, in a cohort of European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris)

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