Physiology of Stress in Wild Animals

所有生物都面临着来自环境的有害事件（如捕食者或风暴）。动物为了在这些事件中生存而产生应激反应，但即使经过近100年的研究，我们仍然只有一个基本的概念，即应激反应如何帮助野生动物生存。 这种知识的缺乏越来越重要，因为人为的有害事件（如栖息地退化或人类干扰）可能会导致慢性压力。 虽然对捕食者或风暴的短期压力反应是生存所必需的，但慢性压力可能非常有害，如果它影响到足够多的个体，可能导致种群下降。将使用野生欧洲椋鸟来检验以下假设：（1）慢性应激鸟类的正常应激反应发生改变，（2）慢性应激如何改变应激反应存在季节差异，（3）实验室中对慢性应激的反应准确地模拟了自由生活鸟类的反应。 检验这些假设将需要一个综合的方法，实验室和现场研究的生理和行为的圈养和自由生活的椋鸟。 该项目的最终目标是建立长期应激野生动物的生理和内分泌概况。 这将使我们能够在野外识别长期处于压力下的个体，这将对我们对压力反应的生态重要性的基本知识产生深远的影响。学生的帮助对完成上述研究至关重要。 研究生和本科生都将接受有关如何诱捕动物、采集样本、进行分析、撰写手稿以及其他重要实验室和现场技能的重要培训。这些研究也将具有广泛的公众吸引力。 保护任务应该受益于能够确定动物是否长期紧张。

All organisms are faced with noxious events (such as predators or storms) from the environment. Animals mount a stress response in order to survive these events, but even after nearly 100 years of studying stress, we still have only a basic idea of how the stress response helps wild animals to survive. This lack of knowledge is of growing importance because man-made noxious events (such as habitat degradation or human disturbance) might cause chronic stress. Although a short-term stress response to a predator or storm is necessary for survival, chronic stress can be very harmful, and if it affects enough individuals, can cause population declines. Wild European starlings will be used to test the hypotheses that: (1) the normal stress response is altered in chronically-stressed birds, (2) there are seasonal differences in how chronic stress alters the stress response, (3) responses to chronic stress in the laboratory accurately model responses in free-living birds. Testing these hypotheses will require an integrated approach of laboratory and field studies on the physiology and behavior of both captive and free-living starlings. The ultimate goal of this project is to create a physiological and endocrinological profile of chronically stressed wild animals. This will allow us to identify chronically stressed individuals in the wild, which will have a far-reaching impact on our basic knowledge of the ecological importance of stress responses.Student help will be vital to completing the above research. Both graduate and undergraduate students will receive important training in how to trap animals, take samples, perform assays, write manuscripts, and other important laboratory and field skills. These studies will also have broad public appeal. Conservation missions should benefit from being able to determine whether animals are chronically stressed.