Meeting Abstract
Organisms must combat multiple environmental stressors throughout their lives. Although stress is commonly discussed as a single process, whether or nor an organism responds in a similar way to diverse stressors is largely uncertain. To shed light on this uncertainty, we experimentally examined the response of lizards (Sceloporus undulatus) to diverse ecologically-relevant stressors: near-critical heat exposure and fire ant attack. We compared both the physiological response (plasma corticosterone and glucose) and transcriptome response in blood and liver to both stressors. In doing so, we address (1) if a transcriptomic signature to stressors can be detected in blood, (2) the degree to which this signature is stressor-specific, and (3) how transcriptomic responses to stressors correlate with physiological responses.
