Across time and space: Hormonal variation across temporal and spatial scales in relation to nesting success.

ABSTRACT: There is a renewed interest in investigating individual variation in hormone levels in relation to fitness metrics, as hormones act as mediators of life-history trade-offs. Hormone concentrations, however, are labile, responding to both internal and external stimuli, so the relationship between hormones and fitness can be non-consistent. One explanation of this inconsistent relationship is that a single hormone sample may not be representative of individual phenotypes in a free-living species. We addressed this issue by repeatedly sampling a free-living population of mountain white-crowned sparrows, Zonotrichia leucophrys oriantha, for baseline and stress-induced corticosterone (cort) and testosterone (T) across different stages of the breeding season. We measured (co)variation using three

SUBMITTER: Grant AR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7187986 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature