Article

Chronological age, biological age, and individual variation in the stress response in the European starling: a follow-up study

Details

Citation

Gott A, Andrews C, Nettle D, Larriva Hormigos M, Spencer K & Bateson M (2018) Chronological age, biological age, and individual variation in the stress response in the European starling: a follow-up study. PeerJ, 6, Art. No.: e5842. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5842

Abstract
The strength of the avian stress response declines with age. A recently published study of European starlings ( Sturnus vulgaris ) found that a marker of biological age predicted the strength of the stress response even in individuals of the same chronological age. Specifically, birds that had experienced greater developmental telomere attrition (DTA) showed a lower peak corticosterone (CORT) response to an acute stressor, and more rapid recovery of CORT levels towards baseline. Here, we performed a follow-up study using the same capture-handling-restraint stressor in a separate cohort of starlings that had been subjected to a developmental manipulation of food availability and begging effort. We measured the CORT response at two different age points (4 and 18 months). Our data suggest a decline in the strength of the CORT response with chronological age: peak CORT was lower at the second age point, and there was relatively more reduction in CORT between 15 and 30 min. Individual consistency between the two age points was low, but there were modest familial effects on baseline and peak CORT. The manipulation of begging effort affected the stress response (specifically, the reduction in CORT between 15 and 30 min) in an age-dependent manner. However, we did not replicate the associations with DTA observed in the earlier study. We meta-analysed the data from the present and the earlier study combined, and found some support for the conclusions of the earlier paper.

Keywords
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology; General Neuroscience; General Agricultural and Biological Sciences; General Medicine

Journal
PeerJ: Volume 6

StatusPublished
FundersBiotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) under grants and European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
Publication date31/12/2018
Publication date online23/10/2018
Date accepted by journal27/09/2018
URLhttp://hdl.handle.net/1893/31765
PublisherPeerJ
eISSN2167-8359

People (1)

People

Dr Clare Andrews

Dr Clare Andrews

Lecturer in Psychology, Psychology