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Season‐dependent impact of forage quality on stress in alpine chamois

Chronically heightened stress levels in wildlife species may have detrimental effects on individual life history traits, for example, through the increased likelihood of disease, parasitic infections, and overall reduced fitness. Understanding the drivers of stress may thus have great potential for...

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Autores principales: Corlatti, Luca, Palme, Rupert, Valencak, Teresa G., Gomez, Kimberlina Marie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10150231/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37139402
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.10045
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author Corlatti, Luca
Palme, Rupert
Valencak, Teresa G.
Gomez, Kimberlina Marie
author_facet Corlatti, Luca
Palme, Rupert
Valencak, Teresa G.
Gomez, Kimberlina Marie
author_sort Corlatti, Luca
collection PubMed
description Chronically heightened stress levels in wildlife species may have detrimental effects on individual life history traits, for example, through the increased likelihood of disease, parasitic infections, and overall reduced fitness. Understanding the drivers of stress may thus have great potential for informing wildlife conservation. Although the role of climate and individual status is well studied in stress ecology, the impact of related stressors such as dietary quality is of increasing interest to wildlife research and conservation. In this study, fecal cortisol metabolites (FCMs) in Alpine chamois Rupicapra r. rupicapra used as bioindicators of stress, and their relationship with forage quality—measured as the percentage of fecal crude protein (CP)—were investigated. Data collection took place in 2011 and 2012 in the Gran Paradiso National Park (Western Italian Alps), on 22 individually marked adult males. The relationship between FCMs and CPs was analyzed through linear models and separated between winter and summer months, accounting for the effect of potentially confounding exogenous and endogenous variables. After AICc‐based model selection, we found that forage quality was negatively related to FCM levels in Alpine chamois during the summer months, meaning that higher quality forage was associated with the decreased expression of stress hormones. However, during the winter months, we did not find a significant relationship, potentially as a result of forage quality being ubiquitously poor. Although the mechanisms through which dietary variations impact FCM concentrations in wildlife populations are largely unknown, the occurrence of significant relationships between forage quality and stress levels supports potentially important implications for the long‐term effect of climatic changes on the fitness of wildlife populations.
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spelling pubmed-101502312023-05-02 Season‐dependent impact of forage quality on stress in alpine chamois Corlatti, Luca Palme, Rupert Valencak, Teresa G. Gomez, Kimberlina Marie Ecol Evol Research Articles Chronically heightened stress levels in wildlife species may have detrimental effects on individual life history traits, for example, through the increased likelihood of disease, parasitic infections, and overall reduced fitness. Understanding the drivers of stress may thus have great potential for informing wildlife conservation. Although the role of climate and individual status is well studied in stress ecology, the impact of related stressors such as dietary quality is of increasing interest to wildlife research and conservation. In this study, fecal cortisol metabolites (FCMs) in Alpine chamois Rupicapra r. rupicapra used as bioindicators of stress, and their relationship with forage quality—measured as the percentage of fecal crude protein (CP)—were investigated. Data collection took place in 2011 and 2012 in the Gran Paradiso National Park (Western Italian Alps), on 22 individually marked adult males. The relationship between FCMs and CPs was analyzed through linear models and separated between winter and summer months, accounting for the effect of potentially confounding exogenous and endogenous variables. After AICc‐based model selection, we found that forage quality was negatively related to FCM levels in Alpine chamois during the summer months, meaning that higher quality forage was associated with the decreased expression of stress hormones. However, during the winter months, we did not find a significant relationship, potentially as a result of forage quality being ubiquitously poor. Although the mechanisms through which dietary variations impact FCM concentrations in wildlife populations are largely unknown, the occurrence of significant relationships between forage quality and stress levels supports potentially important implications for the long‐term effect of climatic changes on the fitness of wildlife populations. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2023-05-01 /pmc/articles/PMC10150231/ /pubmed/37139402 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.10045 Text en © 2023 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Corlatti, Luca
Palme, Rupert
Valencak, Teresa G.
Gomez, Kimberlina Marie
Season‐dependent impact of forage quality on stress in alpine chamois
title Season‐dependent impact of forage quality on stress in alpine chamois
title_full Season‐dependent impact of forage quality on stress in alpine chamois
title_fullStr Season‐dependent impact of forage quality on stress in alpine chamois
title_full_unstemmed Season‐dependent impact of forage quality on stress in alpine chamois
title_short Season‐dependent impact of forage quality on stress in alpine chamois
title_sort season‐dependent impact of forage quality on stress in alpine chamois
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10150231/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37139402
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.10045
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