Meeting Abstract
There is increasing interest in understanding how anthropogenic and natural disturbances affect the ability of fish to thrive and reproduce. To assess effects of such disturbances on fish, glucocorticoids (GC) are commonly measured as a way to assess the stress status of the animals. While plasma samples are the gold standard, plasma GC concentrations are relatively volatile and can change rapidly in response to a disturbance, such as the sampling itself. The hepato-biliary-fecal route is the main clearance route for GC in fish and bile may thus be an interesting alternative matrix to assess GC status. Furthermore, it is thought that bile GC concentrations are less sensitive to acute disturbances, thus potentially providing a more integrative measure of the stress status of an individual. Bile may especially be interesting in fish where fecal sampling may not be possible, either because the fish don’t form solid enough casts, or because the fish may not be producing enough fecal matter, e.g., in salmonids that fast for the duration of the spawning season. The main goal of this project is to assess the viability of bile as a matrix to assess the stress status of individual Pacific salmon during migration and spawning. We aim to develop a reliable and relatively straightforward protocol for obtaining and analyzing bile samples from migrating and spawning salmonids. For this project, bile samples were collected from different stock of Pacific salmon at different stages of migration along the Fraser river system in British Columbia, Canada. More specifically, we aim to validate the need for extraction and purification, as well as the suitability of commercially available ELISA kits for analysis of these samples.
