

I just ignored it and started thinking why Bhai is taking so much time to arrive. I saw that man coming towards my direction. "Wait, why I am even complimenting him?" I thought to my self. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104, 8880–8884.As soon as I listen this voice from a very handsome man, I quickly shut my mouth as fast as I can. Stress response during development predicts fitness in a wild, long lived vertebrate.
PIKKA PIKKA HAIR DRIVERS
Contemporary climate change alters the pace and drivers of extinction. Ecological Applicaitons, 20, 164–178.īeever, E. Testing alternative models of climate‐mediated extirpations. Journal of Mammalogy, 84, 37–54.īeever, E. Patterns of apparent extirpation among isolated populations of pika (Ochtona princeps) in the Great Basin. Journal of Statistical Software, 67, 1–48.īeever, E. Fitting linear mixed‐effects models using lme4. This technique should provide a useful tool to researchers wishing to assess chronic stress in climate-sensitive mammals.īody mass climate change glucocorticoids mammal metabolic rate thermal stress wildlife.īates, D. Interestingly, our data suggest evidence for cold stress likely induced during the summer molting period. Additionally, we establish the first direct physiological evidence for thermal stress in the American pika through nonlethal sampling of corticosterone. The higher corticosterone levels in female pikas likely reflected the physiological demands of reproduction, as observed in a wide array of mammalian species.

Our results are consistent with a general negative relationship between body mass and glucocorticoid concentration observed across mammalian species, attributed to the higher mass-specific metabolic rates of smaller bodied animals. The best-supported model suggested that corticosterone was lower in larger, male pikas, and at locations with higher ambient temperatures in summer. Hair- and plasma-based estimates of corticosterone were weakly correlated. Corticosterone was measured accurately in pika hair samples after correcting for the influence of sample mass on corticosterone extraction efficiency.

We used an information theoretic approach to compare support for linear, mixed-effects models relating corticosterone estimates to microclimate, body size, and sex. Microclimate variation was measured at each site using both ambient and subsurface temperature sensors. To demonstrate an ecological application of this technique, we characterized physiological stress in 49 pikas sampled and released at eight sites along two elevational transects.

We validated an immunoassay-based measurement of corticosterone extracted from hair samples and compared corticosterone estimates obtained from plasma, hair, and fecal samples of nine pikas. Here, we report the first use of hair samples to measure long-term corticosterone levels in the climate-sensitive American pika ( Ochotona princeps). Hair, blood, saliva, or fecal samples are generally used depending on the timescale of the stress response being investigated and species-specific considerations. Glucocorticoids are often measured in wildlife to assess physiological responses to environmental or ecological stress.
