Meeting Abstract

57.1  Sunday, Jan. 5 13:30  Nestling maltreatment predicts adult stress response and personality in a free-living seabird GRACE, J.K.*; ANDERSON, D.J.; Wake Forest University gracjk7@wfu.edu

Non-breeding Nazca booby adults exhibit an unusual and intense social attraction to non-familial conspecific nestlings. Non-parental Adult Visitors (NAVs) seek out and approach unguarded nestlings during daylight hours and display parental, aggressive, and/or sexual behavior. In a striking parallel to the “cycle of violence” of human biology, degree of victimization as a nestling is strongly correlated with frequency of future maltreatment behavior exhibited as an adult. During maltreatment episodes, nestlings experience a surge in circulating corticosterone (CORT), consistent with the possibility that repeated activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis permanently organizes future adult maltreatment behavior. We investigated long-term consequences of maltreatment on the CORT stress response and personality traits in free-living Nazca booby adults with known NAV victimization histories. A bird’s maltreatment experience as a nestling negatively predicts baseline CORT as an adult and positively predicts protraction of the adult CORT stress response. Degree of maltreatment experience also positively predicts anxiety-related behaviors and negatively predicts aggressive behaviors performed as an adult. These findings are remarkably similar to those of mammals exposed to moderate/severe perinatal stress, suggesting a conserved response to early social trauma between mammals and birds.