Hair cortisol concentration in Siberian flying squirrels is unrelated to landscape and social factors

Male 0106 biological sciences Hydrocortisone PTEROMYS-VOLANS Land-use change 01 natural sciences LEGISLATION Sex Factors Stress, Physiological Animal physiology Animals Boreal forest Animal Fur POPULATION Ecosystem MOVEMENTS STRESS RESPONSES Stress hormones MATING SYSTEM Age Factors Sciuridae Conservation physiology 15. Life on land Animal physiology; Boreal forest; Conservation physiology; Habitat fragmentation; Land-use change; Stress hormones REPRODUCTION Ecology, evolutionary biology PATTERNS Habitat fragmentation SEX HORMONES Female
DOI: 10.1007/s00114-019-1624-y Publication Date: 2019-05-29T10:52:05Z
ABSTRACT
Intact ecosystems are being lost or modified worldwide, and many animal species are now forced to live in altered landscapes. A large amount of scientific studies have focused on understanding direct effects of habitat alterations on species occurrence, abundance, breeding success, and other life history aspects. Much less attention has been placed on understanding how habitat alterations impact on the physiology of species, e.g., via elevated chronic stress when living in an altered landscape. Here, we quantify the effects of individual age and sex, as well as effects of landscape and social factors on chronic stress of an endangered forest specialist species, the Siberian flying squirrel Pteromys volans. We collected hair samples over 2 years from across 192 flying squirrels and quantified their chronic stress response via cortisol concentrations. We then ran statistical models to relate cortisol concentrations with landscape and social factors. We show that cortisol concentrations in flying squirrels are neither affected by habitat amount and connectivity, nor by the density of conspecifics in the area. We however found that cortisol concentration was higher in adults than in pups, and in males compared with females. Lack of an effect of environmental factors on cortisol concentrations may indicate low physiological sensitivity to alterations in the surrounding environment, possibly due to low densities of predators that could induce stress in the study area. Further research should focus on possible effects of varying predator densities, alone and in interaction with landscape features, in shaping chronic stress of this and other species.
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