Meeting Abstract
A major challenge facing conservation biologists is understanding the extent to which organisms can endure anthropogenic stressors such as habitat loss and global climate change. To clarify the effect of anthropogenic stressors on population viability, we simulated the effect of heightened maternal stress on offspring development in painted turtles. Exposure to the maternal stress hormone corticosterone (CORT) during embryonic development could influence developmental, morphological, and behavioral traits in offspring. We collected 20 clutches of painted turtle eggs and subjected them to three treatments: (1) low CORT (0.05ng/0.5µL), (2) medium CORT (0.25ng/0.5μL), and (3) high CORT (0.50ng/0.5µL). We incubated CORT-treated eggs in the field in a randomized block design. For each offspring, we recorded key traits such as body size and ability to right. Preliminary analyses indicate that treatment by CORT may affect embryos and hatchlings in several ways. Embryos in eggs treated with higher levels of CORT tended to incubate for a shorter period of time, produce hatchlings with shorter plastrons (proxy for size in turtles), or die prior to hatching. These traits have the potential to affect offspring fitness. Thus, this work may give insight into population viability of freshwater turtles experiencing anthropogenic stressors they have not evolved to endure.
