Abstract
Biological assays of stress, in particular noninvasive measures, are valuable tools for wildlife management. Chronic stress can have negative impacts on fitness outcomes, and an area of particular interest is if elevated baseline stress levels are predictive of survival outcomes. We examined the relationship between fecal glucocorticoid metabolites (FGMs) measured from samples collected during routine trapping and overwinter survival in a wild population of yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventris). In particular, we asked if elevated FGMs were associated with reduced survival probability. Both higher yearly FGM levels averaged over several months and higher late season FGM levels averaged over the several weeks before hibernation were associated with lower probability of survival. Additionally, there was an interaction between late-season FGM levels and body mass, such that the association between late-season FGMs and survival was much stronger in animals with lower body mass (i.e., in poorer condition). This study highlights the promise of using stress hormone metabolites, a noninvasive measure, for studying factors affecting survival in this and potentially other natural wildlife systems.
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Acknowledgments
Funding during the work was provided by a US Department of Education GAANN Fellowship, a UCLA Chancellor’s Prize, an RMBL Snyder Graduate Research Fellowship, and a Bartholomew Research Grant (to Wey); the National Geographic Society, the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, the Unisense foundation, a UCLA Faculty Senate Faculty Research Grants, the US National Science Foundation (IDBR 0754247, DEB-1119660), and UCLA Division of Life Sciences Dean’s recruitment and retention funds (to Blumstein); and NSF-DBI-0242960 and NSF-DBI-0731346 (to the RMBL). We thank Rebecca Nelson Booth for radioimmunoassay at the University of Washington Center for Conservation Biology, Jennifer E. Smith for fecal glucocorticoid metabolite measure validation and analysis, Adriana Maldonado-Chaparro and Julien G. A. Martin for data management, and many research assistants and the RMBL for making this work possible. We also thank the editor Ana Silva and two anonymous reviewers for the comments on a previous version of this manuscript.
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Wey, T.W., Lin, L., Patton, M.L. et al. Stress hormone metabolites predict overwinter survival in yellow-bellied marmots. acta ethol 18, 181–185 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10211-014-0204-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10211-014-0204-6