Meeting Abstract

S6-1.1  Sunday, Jan. 6  Allostasis, resilience and coping with a changing world WINGFIELD, JC; University of California, Davis jcwingfield@gmail.com

A potentially serious outcome of global climate change is the increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Additionally, environmental perturbations such as human disturbance, invasive species, social disruption and pollution indicate that bird populations world wide face major challenges in coping with stress. Responses to one or more environmental perturbations incur energetic costs in addition to those of the normal life cycle such as breeding, migrating etc. The concept of allostasis provides a framework to integrate energetic demand and wear and tear of daily and seasonal routines (the predictable life cycle) with perturbations of the environment including disease, aging and social status. The concept is particularly attractive because it allows a framework to assess the challenges faced in changing social and physical environments at the individual level because no single organism experiences the environment in exactly the same way as another. The reactive scope of the mediators of coping mechanisms, such as the adrenocortical response to acute stress, also vary on seasonal, daily, habitat and individual bases. Understanding these regulatory mechanisms will be critical to ameliorating the effects of global change in general.