Genetic inheritance and environment determine endocrine plasticity to urban living

As urban areas continue to expand globally, understanding how and why species respond to novel habitats becomes increasingly important. Knowledge of the mechanisms behind observed phenotypic changes in urban animals will enable us to better evaluate the impact of urbanization on current and future generations of wildlife. Physiological changes, such as those involved in the endocrine stress response, may allow individuals to inhabit and thrive in urbanized areas, but it is currently unknown how these changes arise in natural populations. In this study, we performed a 4-way crossfoster experiment in free-living house wren chicks, Troglodytes aedon, to disentangle whether differences in baseline corticosterone between urban and rural individuals is a result of genetic and/or plastic mechanisms during development. We found that urban chicks already had higher corticosterone levels than their rural counterparts on the day they hatched, which suggests a possible genetic component to the cort...

随着全球城市区域持续扩张，阐明物种对新生栖息地的响应方式与内在动因，其重要性愈发凸显。掌握城市动物已观测到的表型变化背后的调控机制，将有助于我们更精准地评估城市化对当代及未来野生生物种群的影响。诸如参与内分泌应激响应的生理变化，或可帮助个体在城市化区域存活并繁衍，但目前学界仍不清楚这类变化在自然种群中的产生机制。本研究针对野生家鹪鹩（Troglodytes aedon）雏鸟开展了四向交叉寄养实验，旨在厘清城乡个体间基础皮质酮水平的差异，是否源于发育过程中的遗传和/或表型可塑性机制。研究结果显示，城市雏鸟在破壳当日的皮质酮水平便已高于乡村同类，这表明皮质酮调控或存在遗传基础...