Meeting Abstract

P2.155  Sunday, Jan. 5 15:30  Impacts of daily corticosterone administration on nestling eastern bluebirds’ (Sialia sialis) age at fledging and parental behavior and corticosterone SURETTE, F.A.*; DAVIS, J.E.; GUINAN, J.A.; Radford University; Radford University; Radford University fsurette@radford.edu

Vertebrates are known to respond to environmental perturbations and life history events such as reproduction, in part, through HPA activation and glucocorticoid release. Our previous research on the relationship between stress, behavior, and reproductive success in eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis), found that as nestling baseline corticosterone levels increased, both female baseline corticosterone and female and male feeding trips to the nest increased. Because of these correlations, we hypothesized that if we experimentally increased nestling corticosterone levels, we would observe an increase in maternal corticosterone and parental feeding trips to those nests. To test this, broods of nestlings were chosen at random to receive a topically applied daily acute dosage of either corticosterone diluted with dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) or DMSO alone. Parental blood samples were taken twice during the nestling stage, once prior to the start of nestling treatment and once after the nestlings had been treated for 7 days. Additionally, we observed parental nest attentiveness, as well as nestling morphology and age at fledging. Here we discuss the results of our analysis on parental nest attendance and parental and nestling corticosterone levels to determine whether nestling stress levels were related to parental stress levels and behavior.