![]() ![]() The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is a highly conserved, integrated system in vertebrates that functions to prioritise immediate survival over non-essential activities in the face of acute threats. We meta-analysed the data from the present and the earlier study combined, and found some support for the conclusions of the earlier paper. However, we did not replicate the associations with DTA observed in the earlier study. The manipulation of begging effort affected the stress response (specifically, the reduction in CORT between 15 and 30 min) in an age-dependent manner. Individual consistency between the two age points was low, but there were modest familial effects on baseline and peak CORT. Our data suggest a decline in the strength of the CORT response with chronological age: peak CORT was lower at the second age point, and there was relatively more reduction in CORT between 15 and 30 min. We measured the CORT response at two different age points (4 and 18 months). Here, we performed a follow-up study using the same capture-handling-restraint stressor in a separate cohort of starlings that had been subjected to a developmental manipulation of food availability and begging effort. Specifically, birds that had experienced greater developmental telomere attrition (DTA) showed a lower peak corticosterone (CORT) response to an acute stressor, and more rapid recovery of CORT levels towards baseline. A recently published study of European starlings ( Sturnus vulgaris) found that a marker of biological age predicted the strength of the stress response even in individuals of the same chronological age. The strength of the avian stress response declines with age. ![]() Chronological age, biological age, and individual variation in the stress response in the European starling: a follow-up study. Cite this article Gott A, Andrews C, Larriva Hormigos M, Spencer K, Bateson M, Nettle D. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. Licence This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. Andrews, UK DOI 10.7717/peerj.5842 Published Accepted Received Academic Editor George Bentley Subject Areas Animal Behaviour, Zoology Keywords Biological age, Stress response, Corticosterone, Developmental programming, Starlings, Telomeres Copyright © 2018 Gott et al. 2 School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St. ![]()
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