Search

The risk of predation directly affects the physiology, behavior, and fitness of wild birds. Strong social connections with conspecifics could help individuals recover from a stressful experience such as a predation event; however, competitive interactions also have the potential to exacerbate stress. Few studies have investigated the interaction between environmental stressors and the social landscape in wild bird populations. In 2 years of field studies, we experimentally simulated predation attempts on breeding female tree swallows (Tachicyneta bicolor). At the same time, we manipulated female breast plumage color, a key social signal. Simulated predation events on tree swallows early in the nestling period reduced young nestlings' mass by approximately 20% and shortened telomere lengths. Ultimately, only 31% of nestlings in the predation group fledged compared with 70% of control nestlings. However, the effects of experimental manipulations were timing dependent: the following year when we swapped the order of the experimental manipulations and simulated predation during incubation, there were no significant effects of predation on nestling condition or fledging success. Contrary to our expectations, manipulation of the social environment did not affect the response of tree swallows to simulated predation. However, manipulating female plumage during the nestling period did reduce nestling skeletal size and mass, although the effects depended on original plumage brightness. Our data demonstrate that transient stressors on female birds can have carry-over effects on their nestlings if they occur during critical periods in the breeding season., (© 2024 The Ecological Society of America.)

The social environment that individuals experience appears to be a particularly salient mediator of stress resilience, as the nature and valence of social interactions are often related to subsequent health, physiology, microbiota, and overall stress resilience. Relatively few studies have simultaneously manipulated the social environment and ecological challenges under natural conditions. Here, we report the results of experiments in wild tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) in which we manipulated both ecological challenges (predator encounters and flight efficiency reduction) and social interactions (by experimental dulling of a social signal). In two experiments conducted in separate years, we reversed the order of these treatments so that females experienced either an altered social signal followed by a challenge or vice-versa. Before, during, and after treatments were applied, we tracked breeding success, morphology and physiology (mass, corticosterone, and glucose), nest box visits via an RFID sensor network, cloacal microbiome diversity, and fledging success. Overall, we found that predator exposure during the nestling period reduced the likelihood of fledging and that signal manipulation sometimes altered nest box visitation patterns, but little evidence that the two categories of treatment interacted with each other. We discuss the implications of our results for understanding what types of challenges and what conditions are most likely to result in interactions between the social environment and ecological challenges., (© 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Artificial light at night (hereafter "ALAN") affects 88% of the land area in Europe and almost half of the land area in the USA, with even rural areas exposed to lights from agricultural and industrial buildings. To date, there have been few studies that assess the impacts of ALAN on both wildlife behavior and physiology. However, ALAN may alter energy expenditure and/or stress physiology during the breeding period, potentially reducing reproductive success and resulting in conservation implications. Here, we experimentally exposed adult female and nestling tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) to ALAN. We then measured the effects of ALAN compared with control conditions on parental behavior (provisioning rate), nestling physiology (corticosterone levels), and reproductive success (likelihood of all eggs hatching and all nestlings fledging per nest). Our results showed that ALAN-exposed females provisioned their nestlings at lower rates than control females. Although relatively weak, our results also suggested that ALAN-exposed nestlings had reduced baseline and increased stress-induced corticosterone compared with control nestlings. ALAN-exposed nestlings also showed greater negative feedback of circulating corticosterone. We found no support for our prediction that ALAN would reduce nestling body condition. Finally, we found some support for a negative effect of ALAN on the likelihood that all eggs hatched in a given nest, but not the likelihood that all nestlings fledged. Therefore, while it is possible that the behavioral and physiological changes found here result in long-term consequences, our results also suggest that direct ALAN exposure alone may not have substantially large or negative effects on tree swallows. Exposure regimes for free-living birds, such as exposure to a combination of anthropogenic disturbances (i.e., ALAN and noise pollution) or direct and indirect effects of ALAN (i.e., effects on physiology due to direct light exposure and alterations in food availability), may produce different results than those found here., (© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. All rights reserved. For permissions please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Anthropogenic impacts, such as noise pollution from transportation networks, can serve as stressors to some wildlife species. For example, increased exposure to traffic noise has been found to alter baseline and stress-induced corticosterone levels, reduce body condition and reproductive success, and increase telomere attrition in free-living birds. However, it remains unknown if alterations in nestling phenotype are due to direct or indirect effects of noise exposure. For example, indirect (maternal) effects of noise may occur if altered baseline and stress-induced corticosterone in mothers results in differential deposition of yolk steroids or other components in eggs. Noise exposure may also alter nestling corticosterone levels directly, given that nestlings cannot escape the nest during development. Here, we examined maternal versus direct effects of traffic noise exposure on baseline and stress-induced corticosterone levels, and body condition (as measured by size-corrected mass) in nestling tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor). We used a two-way factorial design and partially cross-fostered eggs between nests exposed to differing levels (i.e. amplitudes) of traffic noise. For nestlings that were not cross-fostered, we also investigated the effects of traffic noise on telomere dynamics. Our results show a positive relationship between nestling baseline and stress-induced corticosterone and nestling noise exposure, but not maternal noise exposure. While we did not find a relationship between noise and body condition in nestlings, nestling baseline corticosterone was negatively associated with body condition. We also found greater telomere attrition for nestlings from nests with greater traffic noise amplitudes. These results suggest that direct, rather than maternal, effects result in potentially long-lasting consequences of noise exposure. Reduced nestling body condition and increased telomere attrition have been shown to reduce post-fledging survival in this species. Given that human transportation networks continue to expand, strategies to mitigate noise exposure on wildlife during critical periods (i.e. breeding) may be needed to maintain local population health in free-living passerines, such as tree swallows., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Transportation noise affects urbanized, rural, and otherwise unaltered habitats. Given expanding transportation networks, alterations in the acoustic landscapes experienced by animals are likely to be pervasive and persistent (i.e. chronic). It is important to understand if chronic noise exposure alters behavior and physiology in free-living animals, as it may result in long-lasting impacts, such as reduced reproductive success. Here, we experimentally tested the effects of chronic traffic noise on baseline and stress-induced corticosterone (the primary avian glucocorticoid), parental feeding behavior, and fitness proxies in breeding tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor). Our results show that chronic traffic noise is related to altered corticosterone in both adult female and nestling tree swallows, suggesting that noise may be a stressor in both groups. In adult females, our results suggest that traffic noise is related to a limited ability to respond to subsequent acute stressors (i.e. reduced stress-induced corticosterone levels after handling). Further, our results show no evidence of habituation to noise during the breeding season, as the negative relationship between traffic noise and adult female stress-induced corticosterone became stronger over time. In nestlings, we found a positive relationship between traffic noise exposure and baseline corticosterone. Finally, we found a negative relationship between traffic noise and nestling body condition, despite no detectable effects of noise on nestling provisioning (e.g. parental feeding rate, or insect bolus size/composition). These results highlight the potential long-term consequences of chronic noise exposure, as increased baseline corticosterone and reduced nestling body condition in noise-exposed areas may have negative, population-level consequences., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)