Meeting Abstract
Maternal hormonal responses to environmental or social cues have well-known effects on many offspring characteristics. This includes offspring traits that directly interface with the environment (behavior, life history traits) to those that may underlie variation in such traits (endocrine axes, antioxidant levels, telomere lengths, etc.). The changes in offspring traits caused by maternal hormonal responses may be coordinated and produce an adaptive shift in a network of offspring traits. However, the effects of variation in maternal hormone levels on offspring are often investigated in a univariate fashion. We have been examining if changes in maternal glucocorticoids (GCs) in North American red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) in the Yukon, Canada impact offspring stress reactivity, insulin-signaling, oxidative stress state (oxidative damage, antioxidants, telomere lengths) in addition to their life history traits, behavior, and fitness. We will describe the results from our field studies where we treated breeding females with exogenous GCs and documented their effects on a range of offspring traits. We will discuss these results in the context of our other field studies documenting whether the coordinated changes in offspring traits that we observed are adaptive for specific environmental conditions. By integrating these different studies together, our results highlight the benefits of using a multi-level perspective to examine how changes in maternal hormones affect offspring.
